CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Mindgard vs Operant AI

Mindgard secures AI models, agents, and applications against exploitable threats. Operant AI sells one platform covering Endpoints, Agents, MCPs, and AI applications. CISO Tribune files both under AI model and agent security and AI firewalls and guardrails. 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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  • Mindgard
  • Operant AI
Mindgard vs Operant AI: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
MindgardMindgard secures AI models, agents, and applications against exploitable threats.mindgard.aiOperant AIOperant AI sells one platform covering Endpoints, Agents, MCPs, and AI applications.operant.ai
What it sells
  • AI Red Teaming[1][4][6][10]Mindgard's agentic platform red teams AI systems, agents, and infrastructure.
  • AI Security Expert[9]A subscription that gives a team direct access to a specialist.
  • Operant Semantic Firewall[1][7]Understands the intent behind every agent action and enforces an allow, block, or redact decision inline, in real time.
  • Agent Protector[1][5][6]Inventories all AI agents operating within an organization's infrastructure.
Categories
Headquarters
Boston, United States[2]San Francisco, United States[2]
Founded
2022[2][3]Not stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Privately held[2][3]Privately held[1][3]
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
  • August 13, 2026Mindgard announced a $30M Series A funding round.[11]
  • March 17, 2026Mindgard announced an expansion of its AI security platform that adds a reconnaissance capability for AI models, agents and applications.[12]
  • May 4, 2026Operant AI launched Operant Endpoint Protector, a new addition to its AI Defense Platform for discovering and defending against threats across AI tools and coding agents.[4]
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
Mindgard addresses organizations that secure the AI systems they build, buy and use. The offering is aimed at pen-testers who scale AI-focused security testing efforts, and at developers who integrate ongoing testing for secure AI deployments. Customer types shown include global insurance brokerages, healthcare AI platforms, global financial institutions, semiconductor manufacturers and enterprise technology services. Reporting is directed to security, engineering, GRC, and audit teams.It describes plans for teams putting their first production AI into customers' hands and for companies running AI across teams and products with critical data and compliance requirements. Its pages say regulated and government deployments mostly use the VPC, on-premise, or air-gapped options on the Enterprise plan. Workloads it covers range from coding agents on employee laptops to cloud agents across any infra.
Last verified
September 27, 2026September 27, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Mindgard and Operant AI are both filed under AI model and agent security and AI firewalls and guardrails.
  • Both are headquartered in the United States.
  • Both are privately held.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Mindgard's primary category is AI model and agent security; Operant AI's is AI firewalls and guardrails.
  • Mindgard lists AI Red Teaming and AI Security Expert. Operant AI lists Operant Semantic Firewall and Agent Protector.
  • Mindgard is headquartered in Boston, United States. Operant AI is headquartered in San Francisco, United States.
  • Mindgard was founded in 2022.

What it sells: Mindgard

What AI Security Expert does[9]
The expert shows how to run posture assessments, enhance tooling usage, build adversarial skills, and co-pilot red teaming efforts. The subscription includes workshops that show security and data science teams how adversarial techniques work, how agentic systems fail, and how defensive controls can be applied.

What it sells: Operant AI

What Operant Semantic Firewall does[1][7]
Operant Semantic Firewall holds an agent to its assigned purpose across the whole session, catching drift from manipulation or its own initiative. Operant can redact the sensitive part of an action and let the agent keep working within scope, instead of killing the workflow.
What Agent Protector does[1][5][6]
Agent Protector covers managed agents deployed through official channels and unmanaged agents running in cloud environments, SaaS platforms, and development tools. Agent Protector analyzes agent behavior patterns to identify and prevent security threats before they execute.

Questions about Mindgard and Operant AI

What do Mindgard and Operant AI sell?
Mindgard sells AI Red Teaming and AI Security Expert. Operant AI sells Operant Semantic Firewall and Agent Protector.
Are Mindgard and Operant AI in the same category?
They share AI model and agent security and AI firewalls and guardrails. Mindgard's primary category is AI model and agent security and Operant AI's is AI firewalls and guardrails.
Where are Mindgard and Operant AI headquartered?
Mindgard is headquartered in Boston, United States. Operant AI is headquartered in San Francisco, United States.
When were Mindgard and Operant AI founded?
Mindgard was founded in 2022.
Who owns Mindgard and Operant AI?
Mindgard is privately held. Operant AI is privately held.
Who are Mindgard and Operant AI sold to?
Mindgard addresses organizations that secure the AI systems they build, buy and use. It describes plans for teams putting their first production AI into customers' hands and for companies running AI across teams and products with critical data and compliance requirements.
What have Mindgard and Operant AI announced recently?
August 13, 2026: Mindgard announced a $30M Series A funding round. May 4, 2026: Operant AI launched Operant Endpoint Protector, a new addition to its AI Defense Platform for discovering and defending against threats across AI tools and coding agents.

About Mindgard

Mindgard secures AI models, agents, and applications against exploitable threats. Mindgard combines offensive security expertise, AI red teaming, attacker intelligence, and automated protection to help organizations discover, assess, and mitigate risk across AI models, agents, and applications. Mindgard was created from more than a decade of AI security research at Lancaster University. Mindgard was founded on pioneering research by Dr. Peter Garraghan at Lancaster University, which showed traditional AppSec could not address AI-specific risks. Mindgard's research has produced 150+ publicly disclosed AI vulnerabilities.[1][5]

The Mindgard AI security platform finds, validates, and fixes high-impact AI vulnerabilities. Mindgard operates as an autonomous red teamer, continuously mapping, planning, and executing complex, agentic attack workflows. Mindgard profiles AI systems the way attackers do, mapping models, agents, tools, and behaviors before attack execution. Mindgard automates recon and intelligence gathering on AI systems before adversarial testing to discover instructions, tools, and behaviors attackers can exploit. Mindgard identifies AI models, agents, MCP/A2A servers, connected tools, and shadow AI within products. Mindgard tests AI applications, agents and LLMs, including image, audio and multi-modal models. Mindgard uses reconnaissance and agentic attacks to identify how an attacker could manipulate an agent, access sensitive information, misuse tools, bypass controls, or chain weaknesses together.[1][4][13]

Mindgard validates which weaknesses are exploitable, explains their potential impact, and provides evidence and guidance to help teams close them. AI guardrails and firewalls apply policies to prompts, responses, or actions at runtime, and Mindgard tests whether those controls actually work. Mindgard assesses agents, tools, permissions, APIs, data, and infrastructure beyond the prompt layer. Mindgard evaluates and strengthens AI guardrails and WAF solutions against vulnerabilities.[1][13]

Mindgard deploys through CI/CD, Burp Suite, or a single click. Mindgard integrates into existing workflows with CI/CD automation and a Burp Suite extension. Mindgard uses APIs and integrations to secure models, agents, and AI applications across development and production environments. Mindgard routes findings through APIs, CI/CD, and enterprise workflow integrations into existing security tooling, ticketing systems, and engineering workflows. Mindgard integrates report viewing into existing systems and SIEM. Mindgard supports SAML/SSO, SCIM provisioning, and RBAC to align security testing with organizational compliance standards.[1][4][13][14][15]

Mindgard generates evidence, remediation guidance, and audit-ready reports mapped to OWASP, MITRE, NIST, and AIUC-1. Mindgard discovers and inventories AI applications, models, agents, and shadow AI across an entire environment. Mindgard prioritizes findings by severity, exposure, affected target, business context, and urgency of remediation. Mindgard gives security, engineering, GRC, and audit teams reporting they can use to demonstrate that AI risks and controls are being continuously evaluated. Security teams use Mindgard to discover and remediate high impact risk.[4][15]

Mindgard researchers attack AI systems the way a motivated adversary would, using prompt injection, agent hijacking, tool abuse, data extraction and guardrail bypass, chained into attack paths. Mindgard red teams the whole AI system, not just the model. A single LLM application typically takes two to three weeks from kickoff to report in a Mindgard AI pentest. Mindgard sells a dedicated Technical Account Manager as an annual subscription. Mindgard's AI Security Expert subscription gives a team direct access to a specialist. Mindgard training includes instructor-led workshops where teams build agents, test attacks, configure guardrails, and harden defenses.[6][7][8][9][10][13]

A US insurance brokerage used Mindgard to secure nine production AI models. Mindgard secured Fortune 500 design partners. Mindgard expanded its leadership with CEO James Brear, Head of Research Aaron Portnoy, and Offensive Security Lead Rich Smith. Mindgard lists SOC 2 Type 2. Mindgard says 86% of its staff are on the R&D team and 38% hold PhDs.[1][5][6][7][8][9][10][13][14]

Mindgard on the record

Sources

Mindgard full record

  1. [1]Mindgard - AI Red Teaming & AI Security SolutionsMindgard · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]About Mindgard: Offensive AI Security CompanyMindgard · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Mindgard raises 30 million to protect ai systemsSecurityWeek · securityweek.com · published August 12, 2026 · Tier B
  4. [4]AI Security Software: Advanced AI Testing Tools - MindgardMindgard · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]AI Security Services: Secure Agentic AI Systems - MindgardMindgard · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]AI Red Teaming Services for LLMs and Agents - MindgardMindgard · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]AI Penetration TestingMindgard · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]AI Security Advisory Services for Enterprise AI - MindgardMindgard · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]AI Security Consulting Services for Enterprise AI - MindgardMindgard · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]AI Security TrainingMindgard · undated page, accessed October 26, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Mindgard Raises $30M Series AMindgard · published August 13, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Mindgard Unveils First Autonomous AI Security Platform To Identify And Fix Exploitable VulnerabilitiesBusiness Wire · published March 17, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Offensive Security Tool for AI Systems - MindgardMindgard · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Mindgard vs Prompt SecurityMindgard · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]AI Governance & ComplianceMindgard · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A

Operant AI full record

  1. [1]Operant AI - Secure Your AIOperant AI · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Operant ai launches agent protector the first real time agentic security solution enabling safe ai agent innovation at scaleOperant AI via GlobeNewswire · globenewswire.com · published February 5, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Operant ai secures 10m series a to protect the modern cloud across apis applications and aiOperant AI via GlobeNewswire · globenewswire.com · published September 12, 2024 · Tier A
  4. [4]Operant AI Endpoint Protector secures AI agents and MCP toolsHelp Net Security · published May 4, 2026 · Tier B
  5. [5]Pricing - AI & Agent Security Platform | Operant AIOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]Agent Protector: Real-Time AI Agent Security | OperantOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]Operant Semantic Firewall | Govern AI Agents in Real TimeOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Operant MCP GatewayOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]AI GatekeeperOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]AI Application SecurityOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]API & Cloud Protector | Real-Time API Security | Operant AIOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Woodpecker: Open Source Red Teaming for AI, APIs & K8sOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]FAQsOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Start Your Free 7-Day Trial | Operant AI Security PlatformOperant AI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A

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