CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Intruder vs Kai

Intruder sells a single platform for continuous scanning across infrastructure, apps and cloud environments. 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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  • Intruder
  • Kai
Intruder vs Kai: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
IntruderIntruder sells a single platform for continuous scanning across infrastructure, apps and cloud environments.intruder.ioKaiKai 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
  • Attack Surface Management[1][8]Finds assets outside an inventory and shows monitored ports and services.
  • Application Security[3]Continuous dynamic application security testing for web apps and single-page apps.
  • Cloud Security[1][3][9]Agentless scanning across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud.
  • 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
London, United Kingdom[2]San Jose, United States
Founded
2015[2][4]Not 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: listed, seen November 12, 2026[13]
  • 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

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

Where they differ, field by field

  • Intruder's primary category is Vulnerability management; Kai's is AI SOC analysts.
  • Intruder is also filed under Cloud security posture management and Penetration testing and red team services. Kai is also filed under Threat intelligence.
  • Intruder lists Attack Surface Management, Application Security and Cloud Security. Kai lists Kai Autonomous Defense Platform, Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), Kai Watch and AI-native SAST.
  • Intruder is headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Kai is headquartered in San Jose, United States.
  • Intruder was founded in 2015.
  • Kai is privately held.

What it sells: Intruder

What Attack Surface Management does[1][8]
It connects to AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, and Cloudflare accounts and takes any domains and IPs. The attack surface view shows every monitored port, the service running on it, and the version behind it.
What Application Security does[3]
Application Security provides continuous dynamic application security testing (DAST) for web apps, single-page apps and underlying infrastructure, including authenticated scanning behind login pages. A ZAP-powered scanner runs over 75 application checks and integrates with CI/CD pipelines through GitHub, GitLab, Jira and Azure DevOps.
What Cloud Security does[1][3][9]
Cloud Security runs agentless scanning across AWS, Azure and Google Cloud for misconfigurations, insecure permissions, exposed secrets and critical vulnerabilities. CSPM checks run daily and trigger when the environment changes. Intruder scans container images at the registry level.

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 Intruder and Kai

What do Intruder and Kai sell?
Intruder sells Attack Surface Management, Application Security and Cloud Security. Kai sells Kai Autonomous Defense Platform, Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM), Kai Watch and AI-native SAST.
Are Intruder and Kai in the same category?
They share External attack surface management. Intruder's primary category is Vulnerability management and Kai's is AI SOC analysts.
Where are Intruder and Kai headquartered?
Intruder is headquartered in London, United Kingdom. Kai is headquartered in San Jose, United States.
When were Intruder and Kai founded?
Intruder was founded in 2015.
Who owns Intruder and Kai?
Kai is privately held.
Who are Intruder and Kai sold to?
From its own pages, the company sells mainly to enterprises.
What have Intruder 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 Intruder

Intruder sells a single platform for continuous scanning across infrastructure, apps and cloud environments. Intruder was founded in 2015 by Chris Wallis to help solve the information overload crisis in vulnerability management. Intruder Systems Ltd completed the AICPA Service Organization Control (SOC) 2 Type 2 audit. The Intruder portal runs as a SaaS environment with logical data separation between clients' datasets.[5]

Intruder runs emerging threat scans within hours of new critical vulnerabilities going public. Intruder checks systems for 170,000+ infrastructure weaknesses, 75+ web-layer security issues and other misconfigurations. Intruder emerging threat scans check systems for newly discovered vulnerabilities automatically, as soon as a check is available. Intruder is powered by scanners including Tenable, Nuclei, OpenVas, and ZAP. Intruder offers internal target scanning only on the Pro and Enterprise plans.[6][7]

Intruder describes attack surface management as the continuous process of discovering, assessing, and reducing every digital asset an attacker can reach, including systems that are unknown or unmanaged. Port scans run daily in Intruder to track what is exposed. New service scans trigger in Intruder when something in the environment changes, and emerging threat scans run when a major new vulnerability is disclosed. The Intruder attack surface view shows every monitored port, the service running on it, and the version behind it, with a screenshot of each web service. Users of the Intruder attack surface view can search or filter by port, service, product, host status, or certificate expiry.[1][8]

Intruder cloud security needs no agents and connects to AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud accounts. Intruder connects to cloud accounts using read-only access, and nothing is deployed into the infrastructure. Intruder scans container images at the registry level. Intruder shows cloud misconfigurations, exposed secrets, insecure permissions, CVEs, and attack surface issues in one place.[8][9]

A ZAP-powered scanner in Intruder runs over 75 application checks for injection flaws, misconfigurations and zero-days. The same Intruder scanner integrates with CI/CD pipelines through GitHub, GitLab, Jira and Azure DevOps, and prioritizes results with remediation advice.

Intruder takes a white-box approach, working from source code. Intruder's agents are built and trained by CREST-certified pentesters and validate every finding against the application. Intruder delivers AI pentest results in a report containing an executive summary, full technical details, and remediation guidance. Intruder formats the AI pentest report to serve as compliance evidence for frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001, PCI DSS, and Cyber Essentials. Intruder also connects to a Bitbucket code repo to run a pentest on demand.[10][11]

Intruder integrates with Jira, GitHub, GitLab, Azure DevOps, and ServiceNow for issue tracking, Slack and Microsoft Teams for alerts, Drata and Vanta for compliance, and Microsoft Sentinel for SIEM. Intruder syncs container images from Docker Hub accounts for scanning. Intruder syncs targets from a Cloudflare environment and scans them for vulnerabilities. Intruder supports Okta SSO for authenticating users. Intruder prices the Cloud and Pro plans as a base fee plus a fee-per-target. Intruder quotes Enterprise pricing separately, because it depends on requirements and the size and complexity of the customer's systems. Customers can choose either a monthly rolling plan, which can be cancelled at any time, or an annual plan.[7][9][11]

Ravelin uses Intruder for continuous vulnerability scanning of its payment systems. Brainlabs relies on Intruder to find unknowns as new acquisitions reshape its attack surface. Hill & Smith uses Intruder to uncover hidden assets and expand visibility of its attack surface. Litmus uses Intruder to automate security and protect customer data. Surveil partnered with Intruder to gain attack surface visibility.[1][7][8][9][10]

Intruder on the record

Sources

Intruder full record

  1. [1]intruder.ioIntruder · intruder.io · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]CareersIntruder · intruder.io · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Intruder | Stop Breaches Before They StartIntruder · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Intruder About Us | Providing Effortless Cyber SecurityIntruder · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Intruder Security | How We Keep Your Data SecureIntruder · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Solution TemplateIntruder · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Intruder Pricing | Plans & Bolt-onsIntruder · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Attack Surface Management for Shadow IT and Exposures | IntruderIntruder · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Cloud Security for AWS, Azure and Google Cloud in One View | IntruderIntruder · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]AI Pentesting: On-Demand Web App Pentests in Hours | IntruderIntruder · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Integrations | Jira, Slack, Vanta, AWS & MoreIntruder · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Customer Success Stories | IntruderIntruder · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Intruder Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & FeaturesG2 · undated page, accessed November 12, 2026 · Tier C

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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