CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Impart Security vs Obsidian Security

Impart Security sells programmable, deterministic Layer 7 protection across AI, applications and APIs. 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 AI model and agent 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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Up to four companies side by side.

  • Impart Security
  • Obsidian Security
Impart Security vs Obsidian Security: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
Impart SecurityImpart Security sells programmable, deterministic Layer 7 protection across AI, applications and APIs.impart.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
  • Agent Protection[3][10]Enforces application-specific policies on agent traffic and tool interactions.
  • API Security[5][8][10]Enforces controls based on how APIs behave across requests and sessions.
  • Runtime Defense Harness[10]Uses AI-assisted investigation to develop targeted virtual patches.
  • Continuous GovernanceChecks each requirement, written once, in each connected app that exposes the data it needs.
Categories
Headquarters
San Francisco, United StatesNot stated on its pages
Founded
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Privately heldPrivately 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
Impart describes protection that runs inside an organisation's existing ingress. The stated coverage spans AI, applications and APIs. Impart also describes integrating its protection into existing ingress and egress infrastructure, with policies and runtime state synchronized across distributed environments.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
September 27, 2026November 4, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Impart Security and Obsidian Security are both filed under AI model and agent security.
  • Both are privately held.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Impart Security's primary category is AI firewalls and guardrails; Obsidian Security's is SaaS security posture.
  • Impart Security is also filed under Bot and abuse management. Obsidian Security is also filed under Workforce AI usage security and Identity threat detection and response.
  • Impart Security lists Agent Protection, API Security and Runtime Defense Harness. Obsidian Security lists Continuous Governance.
  • Impart Security is headquartered in San Francisco, United States.

What it sells: Impart Security

What Agent Protection does[3][10]
Agent Protection enforces application-specific policies on agent traffic and tool interactions, using runtime context to restrict unauthorized actions and access. Agent Protection runs on the same ingress-layer enforcement engine that inspects the full attack surface.
What API Security does[5][8][10]
API Security enforces controls based on how APIs behave across requests and sessions, not just individual request signatures. Impart applies inline, sequence-aware enforcement to every API call. API Security detects and blocks shadow APIs as they are accessed. API Security prevents sensitive data (PII) from leaving the system.
What Runtime Defense Harness does[10]
Runtime Defense Harness uses AI-assisted investigation to develop targeted virtual patches and deploy protection through the same engine already protecting the applications. Targeted virtual patches are generated and tested against runtime traffic, with Policy as Code validated before deployment. AI-generated virtual patches are informed by runtime behavior, tested against live traffic and enforced through programmable Layer 7 controls.

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 Impart Security and Obsidian Security

What do Impart Security and Obsidian Security sell?
Impart Security sells Agent Protection, API Security and Runtime Defense Harness. Obsidian Security sells Continuous Governance.
Are Impart Security and Obsidian Security in the same category?
They share AI model and agent security. Impart Security's primary category is AI firewalls and guardrails and Obsidian Security's is SaaS security posture.
Where are Impart Security and Obsidian Security headquartered?
Impart Security is headquartered in San Francisco, United States.
Who owns Impart Security and Obsidian Security?
Impart Security is privately held. Obsidian Security is privately held.
Who are Impart Security and Obsidian Security sold to?
Impart describes protection that runs inside an organisation's existing ingress. 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 Impart Security 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 Impart Security

Impart Security sells programmable, deterministic Layer 7 protection across AI, applications and APIs. Impart enforces security policies directly in the application traffic path. Impart describes one programmable engine that unifies OWASP coverage, stateful behavioral analysis and custom security logic to block threats inline. Impart defines runtime enforcement as the ability to detect and block a threat at the moment the request is made, inline in the path of live traffic. Impart integrates programmable Layer 7 protection into existing ingress and egress infrastructure, enforces deterministic controls locally, and synchronizes policies and runtime state across distributed environments.[4][6][9][10]

For bots, Impart blocks credential stuffing, scraping and AI-driven automation with stateful controls that evaluate request patterns and session behavior. For agents, Impart enforces application-specific policies on agent traffic and tool interactions, using runtime context to restrict unauthorized actions and access. Impart detects and blocks shadow APIs as they are accessed. Impart's API enforcement prevents sensitive data (PII) from leaving the system.[8][10]

Impart sits between the agent and the customer's systems, enforcing security before any action executes. Agent protection runs on the same ingress-layer enforcement engine that inspects the full attack surface. Impart evaluates each prompt using session history, identity, prior model interactions and the chain of tool calls behind it. Impart's LLM enforcement sits inline between the caller and the model and runs before the prompt reaches inference. Impart builds a live catalog of every MCP server reaching the environment, sanctioned or not, and every tool exposed by each one. Policy-as-code in Impart applies the same way to AI clients, CLI users, web apps and direct API callers.[3][5][6][8]

Runtime Defense Harness uses AI-assisted investigation to develop targeted virtual patches and deploy protection through the same engine already protecting the applications. Impart generates and tests targeted virtual patches against runtime traffic, validating Policy as Code before deployment. Impart deploys custom virtual patches in under 60 minutes. Impart executes custom security logic inline using request context and shared session state, and blocks attacks without model inference in the traffic path.[4][10]

Impart runs inside the existing ingress, without adding an extra traffic hop or single point of failure. A lightweight module runs inside the existing ingress controller, capturing HTTP requests after TLS termination and passing them to a local inspector. If the inspector fails or times out, the module fails open. The Impart inspector runs locally alongside the ingress to evaluate request context, runtime state and custom security logic. Enforcement decisions in Impart are deterministic, and no AI inference or cloud round trip is required. Impart Cloud keeps policies and shared state in sync. Impart extends programmable Layer 7 protection to outbound AI requests and agent interactions through supported AI gateway infrastructure. Impart inspects traffic, applies custom security logic and protects sensitive data without replacing the existing gateway, routing or cost controls. The Impart Security plugin runs natively inside Kong Gateway, paired with an Impart Inspector running in the customer's own environment.[5][9][10]

Impart inspects every request to AI applications, web applications and APIs in the traffic path where it sits. The Impart integration with Wiz sends hosts to a Wiz tenant as Imported Assets, next to the cloud resources. Impart sends hostnames to Wiz and does not read Wiz issues, findings or resources. FanDuel replaced black-box security with Impart. Impart offered Crossbeam a single solution for web application, API security and LLM protection.[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10]

Impart Security on the record

Sources

Impart Security full record

  1. [1]impart.aiImpart Security · impart.ai · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]impart.aiImpart Security · impart.ai · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Agent Protection - Control AI Agent Behavior | ImpartImpart Security · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]AI Runtime Defense | Impart Security PlatformImpart Security · undated page, accessed October 25, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]LLM Protection | Deterministic Agent Controls | ImpartImpart Security · undated page, accessed October 25, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]MCP Protection | Runtime Control for MCP Layer | ImpartImpart Security · undated page, accessed October 25, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]WAF for the Agentic Era | Impart SecurityImpart Security · undated page, accessed October 25, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]API Security for the Agentic Era | Impart SecurityImpart Security · undated page, accessed October 25, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Integrations with Impart Security | Impart Security Runtime ProtectionImpart Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Programmable Layer 7 Firewall | Impart SecurityImpart Security · undated page, accessed November 10, 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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