CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Hilt vs Pillar Security

Hilt sells a platform that maps data movement across cloud and endpoint infrastructure. Pillar Security sells one platform to discover, test, secure and govern every AI agent across an organization. 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
  • Pillar Security
Hilt vs Pillar Security: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
HiltHilt sells a platform that maps data movement across cloud and endpoint infrastructure.hilt.aiPillar SecurityPillar Security sells one platform to discover, test, secure and govern every AI agent across an organization.pillar.security
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.
  • Agentic Endpoint[7][10]Protects the AI agents that run on employee machines.
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 pagesOwned by Vanta
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
Not stated on its pages
  • November 9, 2026Vanta signed a definitive agreement to acquire Pillar Security, an AI security platform that protects AI agents across their lifecycle.[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
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.Not written yet
Last verified
November 6, 2026November 10, 2026

Where they overlap

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

Where they differ, field by field

  • Hilt's primary category is Data loss prevention; Pillar Security's is AI model and agent security.
  • Hilt is also filed under Insider risk management and Third-party risk and security ratings. Pillar Security is also filed under AI governance and AI firewalls and guardrails.
  • Hilt lists Platform, Infrastructure, Endpoints and Auto-update agent. Pillar Security lists Agentic Endpoint.
  • Pillar Security is owned by Vanta.

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: Pillar Security

What Agentic Endpoint does[7][10]
Pillar deploys through an MDM and inventories the AI coding agents across a fleet: which agents run where, their versions, sandbox state and risk. Runtime Guardian sits in the agent's own pre-tool hook for Claude Code, Codex CLI and Cursor, and decides on every action before it runs. Pillar inventories local and remote servers across a fleet and scores each against a catalog of 23,000+ pre-analyzed servers.

Questions about Hilt and Pillar Security

What do Hilt and Pillar Security sell?
Hilt sells Platform, Infrastructure, Endpoints and Auto-update agent. Pillar Security sells Agentic Endpoint.
Are Hilt and Pillar Security in the same category?
They share Workforce AI usage security. Hilt's primary category is Data loss prevention and Pillar Security's is AI model and agent security.
Who owns Hilt and Pillar Security?
Pillar Security is owned by Vanta.
Who are Hilt and Pillar 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.
What have Hilt and Pillar Security announced recently?
November 9, 2026: Vanta signed a definitive agreement to acquire Pillar Security, an AI security platform that protects AI agents across their lifecycle.

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

Pillar Security full record

  1. [1]pillar.securityPillar Security · pillar.security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Pillar Security | Securing the Agentic WorkforcePillar Security · undated page, accessed November 11, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Pillar Security Platform | Securing the Entire AI Software LifecyclePillar Security · undated page, accessed November 11, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]AI Discovery & Posture | Pillar SecurityPillar Security · undated page, accessed November 11, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]AI Red Teaming & Risk Detection | Pillar SecurityPillar Security · undated page, accessed November 11, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]AI Runtime Guardrails | Pillar SecurityPillar Security · undated page, accessed November 11, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Agentic Endpoint: Secure AI Coding Agents | Pillar SecurityPillar Security · undated page, accessed November 11, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]AI Security Solutions | Pillar SecurityPillar Security · undated page, accessed November 11, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]AI Governance & Compliance | Pillar SecurityPillar Security · undated page, accessed November 11, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Deployment Options: Cloud, Self-Hosted, Hybrid · PillarPillar Security · undated page, accessed November 11, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Vanta to Acquire Pillar Security to Turn AI Policy Into PracticeBusiness Wire · published November 9, 2026 · Tier A

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