CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Hilt vs Obsidian Security

Hilt sells a platform that maps data movement across cloud and endpoint infrastructure. Obsidian Security sells real-time visibility, continuous governance and runtime enforcement over agents, identities and integrations across third-party apps. CISO Tribune files both under Workforce AI usage security. 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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  • Hilt
  • Obsidian Security
Hilt vs Obsidian Security: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
HiltHilt sells a platform that maps data movement across cloud and endpoint infrastructure.hilt.aiObsidian SecurityObsidian Security sells real-time visibility, continuous governance and runtime enforcement over agents, identities and integrations across third-party apps.obsidiansecurity.com
What it sells
  • Platform[3][4][5]Maps data movement across cloud and endpoint infrastructure.
  • Infrastructure[1][2][3][4]Collectors read activity at the kernel across Linux hosts, VMs, containers, and bare metal.
  • Endpoints[4]Kernel collectors on macOS and Windows plus a managed browser extension.
  • Auto-update agent[5]Optional agent that rolls out collector updates in the customer's cluster.
  • Continuous GovernanceChecks each requirement, written once, in each connected app that exposes the data it needs.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Founded
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesPrivately held[1]
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
Not stated on its pages
  • August 4, 2026Obsidian Security said it raised $85 million in a Series D funding round that valued the company at $1.1 billion.[15]
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
Hilt describes cases involving regulated customer records leaving onto an engineer's laptop and trading strategies leaving a firm for personal accounts. Hilt collectors cover Linux hosts, VMs, containers, and bare metal, and macOS and Windows devices. For airgapped environments, Hilt ships an offline bundle.From its own pages, Obsidian Security sells to security teams that must defend actions by identities they can barely enumerate, across apps they did not build, on infrastructure they do not control. Obsidian Security describes security teams at large financial services and technology companies adopting its product to detect account takeovers, SaaS threats and privilege misuse. Obsidian Security addresses enterprises whose data lives in third-party enterprise apps they do not own. Obsidian Security addresses organisations whose employees connect AI agents to business apps through MCP. Obsidian Security addresses organisations where each team picks its own AI agent tool.
Last verified
November 6, 2026November 4, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Hilt and Obsidian Security are both filed under Workforce AI usage security.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Hilt's primary category is Data loss prevention; Obsidian Security's is SaaS security posture.
  • Hilt is also filed under Insider risk management and Third-party risk and security ratings. Obsidian Security is also filed under AI model and agent security and Identity threat detection and response.
  • Hilt lists Platform, Infrastructure, Endpoints and Auto-update agent. Obsidian Security lists Continuous Governance.
  • Obsidian Security is privately held.

What it sells: Hilt

What Platform does[3][4][5]
Hilt ties each move to a real person and the job that ran it, then scores it against how the data normally moves. Hilt uses a temporal GNN with proprietary ML models to score every move, and agentic investigation writes the case. Hilt deploys as a single-tenant platform inside the customer's own cloud account.
What Infrastructure does[1][2][3][4]
Hilt collectors read process, file, and network activity at the kernel across Linux hosts, VMs, containers, and bare metal. Hilt collectors roll across a fleet, one per host, with no reboot and no inline tap.
What Endpoints does[4]
Hilt device endpoints run kernel collectors on macOS and Windows, plus a managed browser extension across Edge, Safari, Firefox, and Chromium browsers. On macOS, Hilt uses a system collector and a managed browser extension to watch the last hop, resolved to the person and process behind it.
What Auto-update agent does[5]
The Hilt auto-update agent runs as a Kubernetes CronJob in the customer's cluster. The Hilt auto-update agent polls the Hilt release registry, mirrors new images into the customer's registries, rolls out the update, verifies health after rollout, and reports status to a configured webhook.

What it sells: Obsidian Security

What Continuous Governance does
The control model includes mappings to NIST, CIS, ISO 27001, and GDPR. Supported controls are checked continuously, and changes are shown. Fixes are routed through Jira, ServiceNow, and other supported tools.

Questions about Hilt and Obsidian Security

What do Hilt and Obsidian Security sell?
Hilt sells Platform, Infrastructure, Endpoints and Auto-update agent. Obsidian Security sells Continuous Governance.
Are Hilt and Obsidian Security in the same category?
They share Workforce AI usage security. Hilt's primary category is Data loss prevention and Obsidian Security's is SaaS security posture.
Who owns Hilt and Obsidian Security?
Obsidian Security is privately held.
Who are Hilt and Obsidian Security sold to?
Hilt describes cases involving regulated customer records leaving onto an engineer's laptop and trading strategies leaving a firm for personal accounts. From its own pages, Obsidian Security sells to security teams that must defend actions by identities they can barely enumerate, across apps they did not build, on infrastructure they do not control.
What have Hilt and Obsidian Security announced recently?
August 4, 2026: Obsidian Security said it raised $85 million in a Series D funding round that valued the company at $1.1 billion.

About Hilt

Hilt sells a platform that maps data movement across cloud and endpoint infrastructure. Hilt is Data Movement Governance for modern infrastructure. Hilt ties each move to a real person and the job that ran it, then scores it against how the data normally moves. Hilt uses a temporal GNN with proprietary ML models to score every move, and agentic investigation writes the case. Hilt says the most valuable data leaves on credentials that are supposed to have it.[1][2][3][4]

Hilt collectors are agents on customer hosts that produce metadata-level telemetry, shipped as a Linux static binary and a macOS managed agent. Hilt reads metadata only by default: who moved what, from where, to where, and how many bytes. Content-aware inspection in Hilt is a toggle the customer controls. Hilt supports both metadata-only and content inspection data collection. Hilt collectors read process, file, and network activity at the kernel across Linux hosts, VMs, containers, and bare metal. On macOS, Hilt uses a system collector and a managed browser extension to watch the last hop, resolved to the person and process behind it. Hilt device endpoints run kernel collectors on macOS and Windows, plus a managed browser extension across Edge, Safari, Firefox, and Chromium browsers. Hilt presents a move that begins on Linux and ends on macOS as one story, not three logs.[2][3][4][5]

One example rule is to alert when payroll data is uploaded outside the approved payroll job. Hilt can send findings to Slack or email, or export them to any SIEM. Hilt response options are to alert, block the upload, or isolate the host. Hilt observation runs off the data path, and enforcement is opt-in and acts at the endpoint, never inline on a server's high-throughput path.[2]

Hilt can isolate a host at the network from the control plane, quarantined while the rest of the fleet keeps running. Hilt intervention is optional and set per workload; on Linux the response is host quarantine, and on macOS Hilt can block the exfil itself. Whether Hilt alerts or quarantines the host, the customer gets a written case covering what happened, why it is unusual, the evidence, and what was done, in plain language. Hilt response is opt-in and off by default.[4]

Hilt deploys as a single-tenant platform inside the customer's own cloud account. Each customer receives a dedicated deployment in its own AWS account, GCP project, Azure subscription, or Ali Cloud account. Hilt applies a Terraform configuration to create the platform infrastructure in the account the customer nominates. The Hilt dashboard is a web application for investigation, detection rules, and administration, reached over private networking. The Hilt analytics database is a column store that holds normalized telemetry and findings. Hilt does not receive, mirror, or hold out-of-band access to customer events. The single exception is the anonymized data export, a core pipeline that transfers only anonymized statistical features after the customer's review and approval. A Hilt collector has exactly one outbound destination: the ingest endpoint, over HTTPS on TCP/443.[3]

Hilt collectors roll across a fleet, one per host, with no reboot, no inline tap, and nothing in front of the traffic. Hilt collectors run off the data path with no listening ports and one outbound rule, and cannot drop, delay, or alter a packet. Hilt operates the platform components in the customer's account, shipping releases, applying updates, and monitoring platform health. The Hilt auto-update agent runs as a Kubernetes CronJob in the customer's cluster. For airgapped environments, Hilt ships an offline bundle with the full artifact set.[4][5]

Hilt engineers do not hold standing access to the customer's environment. In the Hilt dashboard, teams constrain which hosts a user can see. Hilt records security-relevant actions to the audit log, which administrators manage.[1][2][5][6]

Hilt on the record

Sources

Hilt full record

  1. [1]hilt.aiHilt · hilt.ai · undated page, accessed November 6, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Hilt | Data Movement Governance at the KernelHilt · undated page, accessed November 11, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Architecture & data flow - Hilt DocumentationHilt · published October 8, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]The Hilt platform | Agentic Data Movement Governance at the kernelHilt · undated page, accessed November 11, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Security operations - Hilt DocumentationHilt · published October 8, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Access & identity - Hilt DocumentationHilt · published October 8, 2026 · Tier A

Obsidian Security full record

  1. [1]obsidiansecurity.comObsidian Security · obsidiansecurity.com · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Unlocking ai potential securelyObsidian Security · obsidiansecurity.com · undated page, accessed November 4, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Secure AI. Fearless Innovation. | ObsidianObsidian Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]The Obsidian Security PlatformObsidian Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Obsidian Security – Who We AreObsidian Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]The Data Behind Better SecurityObsidian Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Network EffectsObsidian Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Automate Third-Party Application ComplianceObsidian Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Runtime Policy Decision Engine for AI Agents | Obsidian SecurityObsidian Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]MCP Security Proxy for AI Agents | Obsidian SecurityObsidian Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]MCP Security: Audit and Control Every MCP ServerObsidian Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Continuous Third-Party App Governance | Obsidian SecurityObsidian Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Third-Party Application Security | Obsidian SecurityObsidian Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Flexible SaaS Security Pricing | ObsidianObsidian Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Obsidian Security raises funding at $1.1 billion valuation on AI security demand | ReutersReuters · published August 4, 2026 · Tier B

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