CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Halo Security vs Kai

Halo Security sells penetration testing and continuous visibility across an attack surface, bringing testing, discovery, and scanning together. Kai is an AI company that sells the Kai Autonomous Defense Platform, an agentic AI platform for cyber asset management, application security, infrastructure vulnerability management, and detection engineering. CISO Tribune files both under External attack surface management. This page sets the two records side by side: what each sells, where it is based, who owns and funds it, the customers it names and its recent news, each fact numbered to its source.

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  • Halo Security
  • Kai
Halo Security vs Kai: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
Halo SecurityHalo Security sells penetration testing and continuous visibility across an attack surface, bringing testing, discovery, and scanning together.halosecurity.comKaiKai is an AI company that sells the Kai Autonomous Defense Platform, an agentic AI platform for cyber asset management, application security, infrastructure vulnerability management, and detection engineering.kai.security
What it sells
  • Penetration Testing[1][2][3][11]Halo Security tests web and mobile applications, APIs, external and internal networks, and wireless environments.
  • Attack Surface Management[1][2]Helps organizations discover and monitor the assets they expose to the internet.
  • Application Scanning[5]Scans web applications for vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting.
  • Kai Autonomous Defense Platform[4][13]An agentic AI platform that executes the exposure lifecycle end to end without human handoffs.
  • Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM)[7]Runs all five CTEM phases and adds auto-remediation and detection as phases six and seven.
  • Kai Watch[7]Monitors telemetry to identify active exploitation while fixes are in progress.
  • AI-native SAST[15]A SAST capability in preview for select customers.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesSan Jose, United States
Founded
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesPrivately held[5]
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
Not stated on its pages
  • July 29, 2026Kai announced findings from its 2026 State of Autonomous Defense Report and made its Auto Remediation capability available.[16]
  • March 10, 2026Kai emerged from stealth with $125 million in funding, led by Evolution Equity Partners with participation from N47 and strategic investors.[11]
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
Not written yetFrom its own pages, the company sells mainly to enterprises. A blog post on its site says it has delivered autonomous security work for enterprises across multiple verticals. Its detection phase names SIEM, EDR, and XDR as the places where it deploys rules. It also says humans control the boundary between autonomous action and human review.
Last verified
November 12, 2026September 27, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Halo Security and Kai are both filed under External attack surface management.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Halo Security's primary category is Penetration testing and red team services; Kai's is AI SOC analysts.
  • Halo Security is also filed under Vulnerability management and Digital risk protection. Kai is also filed under Threat intelligence.
  • Halo Security lists Penetration Testing, Attack Surface Management and Application Scanning. Kai lists Kai Autonomous Defense Platform, Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), Kai Watch and AI-native SAST.
  • Kai is headquartered in San Jose, United States.
  • Kai is privately held.

What it sells: Halo Security

What Penetration Testing does[1][2][3][11]
Halo Security's penetration testing service combines manual investigation with tools whose results are validated by testers. Halo Security tests web and mobile applications, APIs, external and internal networks, and wireless environments. Halo Security offers social engineering and red teaming. An included round of retesting lets customers verify their remediation work.
What Attack Surface Management does[1][2]
Attack surface management covers internet-exposed assets, including websites, APIs, servers, and cloud services. Halo Security continuously checks those assets for vulnerabilities and changes. Halo Security finds and inventories internet-facing assets, including unknown and forgotten websites, IPs, services, and applications.

What it sells: Kai

What Kai Autonomous Defense Platform does[4][13]
The Kai Autonomous Defense Platform executes the exposure lifecycle end to end without human handoffs. Kai aggregates findings from existing security and IT systems, determines reachability and exploitability, discards what cannot be exploited, attaches evidence to what survives, and then remediates. Kai agents interrogate CMDB, endpoint, cloud, identity, scanning, and code systems, then rebuild each asset record from the evidence they find.
What Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) does[7]
Kai runs all five phases, then adds two more: it executes the assigned fix immediately, and it watches exposed assets with targeted detection rules until remediated. Auto-remediation sits at phase six, where Kai takes immediate action once a fix is assigned.
What Kai Watch does[7]
Kai Watch continuously monitors telemetry to identify active exploitation. Kai Watch deploys validated detection rules to contain risk across the environment while fixes are in progress. Kai Watch is part of the detection phase, which Kai places at phase seven once remediation is underway.
What AI-native SAST does[15]
Kai is releasing an AI-native SAST capability in preview for select customers. Kai applies AI-native reachability analysis from the start, combining static analysis with runtime behavior to determine whether a finding is actually exploitable before it reaches a human. Kai validated each finding by automatically generating exploits and running them in an out-of-band non-production environment.

Questions about Halo Security and Kai

What do Halo Security and Kai sell?
Halo Security sells Penetration Testing, Attack Surface Management and Application Scanning. Kai sells Kai Autonomous Defense Platform, Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), Kai Watch and AI-native SAST.
Are Halo Security and Kai in the same category?
They share External attack surface management. Halo Security's primary category is Penetration testing and red team services and Kai's is AI SOC analysts.
Where are Halo Security and Kai headquartered?
Kai is headquartered in San Jose, United States.
Who owns Halo Security and Kai?
Kai is privately held.
Who are Halo Security and Kai sold to?
From its own pages, the company sells mainly to enterprises.
What have Halo Security and Kai announced recently?
July 29, 2026: Kai announced findings from its 2026 State of Autonomous Defense Report and made its Auto Remediation capability available.

About Halo Security

Halo Security sells penetration testing and continuous visibility across an attack surface, bringing testing, discovery, and scanning together. Halo Security tests web and mobile applications, APIs, external and internal networks, and wireless environments. Halo Security offers social engineering and red teaming. Halo Security's penetration testing service combines manual investigation with tools whose results are validated by testers.[1][2][3]

Halo Security's ethical hackers explore how an attacker could get in, what they could reach, and how to close the gap. Customers work directly with US-based experts at Halo Security. Halo Security includes one round of retesting so customers can verify their remediation work. Halo Security provides reports and attestation letters that give a customer's team, auditor, and prospects evidence of its security. Halo Security reports support SOC 2, HIPAA, PCI, and other compliance needs.[1][2]

Attack surface management helps organizations discover and monitor the assets they expose to the internet, including websites, APIs, servers, and cloud services. Halo Security continuously checks those internet-exposed assets for vulnerabilities and changes. Halo Security finds and inventories internet-facing assets, including unknown and forgotten websites, IPs, services, and applications. Halo Security identifies open ports and internet-facing services so customers can monitor changes. Halo Security tracks certificates, security headers, third-party scripts, and other security controls across websites. Halo Security detects known vulnerabilities, missing security patches, and outdated software across external servers. Halo Security scans web applications for vulnerabilities such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting. Halo Security monitors for leaked employee credentials, exposed data, and mentions of an organization on the dark web. Halo Security can identify issues like subdomain takeovers, domains for sale, forgotten projects, and misconfigured cloud services. Halo Security risk scores show the external security posture of different teams and business units.[1][2][4][5][11]

Halo Security is a PCI Security Standards Council Approved Scanning Vendor, and its certificate number is 5078-01-11. Halo Security customers can set scans to run daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, or on-demand. Customers with multiple business units can generate separate reports in the Halo Security portal. Halo Security scans look at an organization from the outside, with nothing to install and nothing to configure.[6][7]

Halo Security connects to AWS to import assets from Route53, ElasticIP, and Elastic Load Balancer. Halo Security creates and tracks security issues in Jira, and it streams security events and findings into Splunk. Halo Security syncs security findings with Vanta for compliance monitoring and reporting, and it sends real-time security alerts to a Slack workspace. Brinqa ingests external attack surface findings directly from the Halo Security platform. Halo Security also runs a Security Review, offered quarterly or semi-annually, in which its team works with customers to identify gaps in their coverage.[8][9][10]

The Halo Security platform helps organizations of all sizes achieve PCI compliance. In 2013, the operation was spun out to form PathDefender, which was shortly thereafter rebranded as TrustedSite. In 2022, the TrustedSite Security services were rebranded as Halo Security, and the TrustedSite brand remains for certification and marketing solutions. Halo Security has a team of over 30 people. Halo Security was originally based in San Francisco and now offers fully remote working opportunities.[1][5][6][7][10][11]

Halo Security on the record

Sources

Halo Security full record

  1. [1]halosecurity.comHalo Security · halosecurity.com · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Trusted, US-Based Penetration Testing | Halo SecurityHalo Security · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]12 Questions to Ask a Pentesting Company | Halo SecurityHalo Security · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Attack Surface Management Features | Halo SecurityHalo Security · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Assess security program effectiveness | Halo SecurityHalo Security · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Achieve PCI Compliance | Halo SecurityHalo Security · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]PCI Compliance Scanning from an ASV | Halo SecurityHalo Security · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Integrations | Halo SecurityHalo Security · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Halo Security + Brinqa: EASM Meets CTEMHalo Security · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Security Review | Halo SecurityHalo Security · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Customers | Halo SecurityHalo Security · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]About Us | Halo SecurityHalo Security · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A

Kai full record

  1. [1]kai.securityKai · kai.security · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Kai emerges from stealth with 125m powering machine speed defense to outpace ai enabled adversaries 302708978Kai via PR Newswire · prnewswire.co.uk · published March 10, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]kai.securityKai Cyber Inc. · kai.security · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Kai Autonomous Defense Platform | End-to-End Agentic Risk ReductionKai · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]PlatformKai · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]We Aren’t Building a Better Tool. We’re Rebuilding Security. | Kai AI-Native Autonomous Defense PlatformKai · published March 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Continuous Threat Exposure Management | Solutions at KaiKai · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Our Story & Manifesto | Kai Agentic AI PlatformKai · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Cyber Asset Attack Surface ManagementKai · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Mythos | Solutions at KaiKai · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Kai Emerges from Stealth with $125M, Powering Machine-Speed Defense to Outpace AI-Enabled AdversariesKai · published March 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Kai Appoints Alfredo Hickman as CISO to Usher in the Future of AI-Driven Security | Kai Autonomous Defense PlatformKai · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]New Research from Kai: UK CISOs Face a Widening AI Security Gap as Attackers Gain the Advantage | Kai Autonomous Defense PlatformKai · published September 21, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Joining Kai as CISO: Rebuilding Security for the AI Era | Kai Autonomous Defense PlatformKai · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Kai product update: AI-native SAST and deeper vulnerability validation through membership in Anthropic's Cyber Verification Program | Kai Autonomous Defense PlatformKai · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]New Research from Kai: CISOs Say AI Is Accelerating Cyber Threats, Driving the Shift to Machine-Led SecurityPR Newswire · published July 29, 2026 · Tier A

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