CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Hilt vs WitnessAI

Hilt sells a platform that maps data movement across cloud and endpoint infrastructure. WitnessAI sells an AI security and governance platform that brings humans and agents under one platform. 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
  • WitnessAI
Hilt vs WitnessAI: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
HiltHilt sells a platform that maps data movement across cloud and endpoint infrastructure.hilt.aiWitnessAIWitnessAI sells an AI security and governance platform that brings humans and agents under one platform.witness.ai
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.
  • Observe[6][11]Finds and catalogs AI applications, agents and MCP servers, and visualizes AI conversations and agentic activity.
  • Control[1][5][6][7][10][11]Governs what AI agents and employees can do, routes prompts to models based on risk or purpose, and generates audit trails.
  • Protect[1][5][6][8][11]Applies runtime security controls and content guardrails intended to block prompt injection and jailbreak attempts and filter harmful responses.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesMountain View, United States[4]
Founded
Not stated on its pages2023[3]
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesPrivately held[2][13]
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: listed, seen November 10, 2026[13]
  • 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, the company sells mainly to enterprises, saying they need security and governance that extends from humans to agents. It addresses employee use of AI, citing risks around sensitive data, compliance, and shadow AI. It also addresses AI agents, which it describes as connecting to tools, accessing data, and taking actions on behalf of employees.
Last verified
November 6, 2026November 2, 2026

Where they overlap

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

Where they differ, field by field

  • Hilt's primary category is Data loss prevention; WitnessAI's is Workforce AI usage security.
  • Hilt is also filed under Insider risk management and Third-party risk and security ratings. WitnessAI is also filed under AI firewalls and guardrails and AI governance.
  • Hilt lists Platform, Infrastructure, Endpoints and Auto-update agent. WitnessAI lists Observe, Control and Protect.
  • WitnessAI is headquartered in Mountain View, United States.
  • WitnessAI was founded in 2023.
  • WitnessAI 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.

Questions about Hilt and WitnessAI

What do Hilt and WitnessAI sell?
Hilt sells Platform, Infrastructure, Endpoints and Auto-update agent. WitnessAI sells Observe, Control and Protect.
Are Hilt and WitnessAI in the same category?
They share Workforce AI usage security. Hilt's primary category is Data loss prevention and WitnessAI's is Workforce AI usage security.
Where are Hilt and WitnessAI headquartered?
WitnessAI is headquartered in Mountain View, United States.
When were Hilt and WitnessAI founded?
WitnessAI was founded in 2023.
Who owns Hilt and WitnessAI?
WitnessAI is privately held.
Who are Hilt and WitnessAI 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, the company sells mainly to enterprises, saying they need security and governance that extends from humans to agents.

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

WitnessAI full record

  1. [1]Unified AI Security and Governance Platform | WitnessAIWitnessAI · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Witnessai raises 58 million for global expansion and announces new ways to secure ai agents 302659319WitnessAI via PR Newswire · prnewswire.com · published January 13, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Witnessai launches with guardrails for aiDark Reading · darkreading.com · published May 21, 2024 · Tier B
  4. [4]WitnessaiAppSec Santa · appsecsanta.com · published April 3, 2026 · Tier C
  5. [5]Scaling AI Security with WitnessAI - WitnessAIWitnessAI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]AI Security Platform | Enterprise AI Governance | WitnessAIWitnessAI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]WitnessAI 2.0 Delivers New Regulatory Compliance Capabilities to Support Safe AI Adoption - WitnessAIWitnessAI · published April 30, 2025 · Tier A
  8. [8]Ensuring Compliance with the EU AI Act - WitnessAIWitnessAI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]WitnessAI Achieves SOC 2 Type II Compliance - WitnessAIWitnessAI · published October 21, 2025 · Tier A
  10. [10]WitnessAI Joins ServiceNow Control Tower Alliance - WitnessAIWitnessAI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]TENEX.AI and WitnessAI Partner to Deliver Managed Security and Compliance Services for Enterprise AI - WitnessAIWitnessAI · published June 17, 2025 · Tier A
  12. [12]How Security Leaders Prove ROI and Reduce Risk - WitnessAIWitnessAI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]WitnessAI Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & FeaturesG2 · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier C

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