CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Mindgard vs Straiker

Mindgard secures AI models, agents, and applications against exploitable threats. Straiker lets security teams discover agents, MCP servers, and Skills, test how they can fail, and stop malicious behavior at runtime. 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
  • Straiker
Mindgard vs Straiker: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
MindgardMindgard secures AI models, agents, and applications against exploitable threats.mindgard.aiStraikerStraiker lets security teams discover agents, MCP servers, and Skills, test how they can fail, and stop malicious behavior at runtime.straiker.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.
  • Discover AI[2][3][4][5][12]Maps every AI agent, MCP server, and agentic workflow in an environment.
  • Ascend AI[2][3][7][12]Ascend AI is Straiker's adversarial testing engine for AI agents.
  • Defend AI[2][3][8][9][12]Defend AI delivers runtime security for AI agents.
Categories
Headquarters
Boston, United States[2]Not stated on its pages
Founded
2022[2][3]Not stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Privately held[2][3]Not stated on its pages
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]
  • August 11, 2026Straiker was named an OpenAI Select Partner within the OpenAI Partner Network.[16]
  • August 4, 2026Straiker launched the Agentic Kill Switch, a control that lets security teams take a misbehaving or compromised AI agent offline.[15]
  • June 29, 2026Straiker announced a $64 million Series A, bringing its total funding to $85 million.[14]
  • June 29, 2026Straiker announced a $64 million Series A, bringing its total funding to $85 million.[13]
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.Not written yet
Last verified
September 27, 2026November 5, 2026

Where they overlap

  • AI model and agent security is the primary category of both Mindgard and Straiker; both are also filed under AI firewalls and guardrails.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Straiker is also filed under AI governance.
  • Mindgard lists AI Red Teaming and AI Security Expert. Straiker lists Discover AI, Ascend AI and Defend AI.
  • Mindgard is headquartered in Boston, United States.
  • Mindgard was founded in 2022.
  • Mindgard is privately held.

How they differ

CISO Tribune files both Mindgard and Straiker under AI model and agent security, AI firewalls and guardrails, with AI model and agent security as the primary category for each; Straiker is also filed under AI governance. Mindgard sells AI Red Teaming, an agentic platform that red teams AI systems, agents, and infrastructure, along with an AI Security Expert subscription that gives a team direct access to a specialist. Straiker sells three products: Discover AI, which maps every AI agent, MCP server, and agentic workflow in an environment, Ascend AI, an adversarial testing engine for AI agents, and Defend AI, which delivers runtime security for AI agents. The overlap is in testing AI agents; the difference is that Straiker adds discovery and runtime blocking in one portfolio, while Mindgard tests whether guardrails and firewalls actually work.

Mindgard is headquartered in Boston, United States, was founded in 2022, and is privately held. It was created from more than a decade of AI security research at Lancaster University. The customer types Mindgard shows include global insurance brokerages, healthcare AI platforms, global financial institutions, semiconductor manufacturers and enterprise technology services. Straiker's Defend AI covers coding agents such as Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and Claude Code.

On August 13, 2026, Mindgard announced a $30M Series A funding round. On March 17, 2026, it announced an expansion of its AI security platform that adds a reconnaissance capability. Straiker announced a $64 million Series A on June 29, 2026, bringing its total funding to $85 million. On August 4, 2026, Straiker launched the Agentic Kill Switch, and on August 11, 2026 it was named an OpenAI Select Partner within the OpenAI Partner Network.

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: Straiker

What Discover AI does[2][3][4][5][12]
Discover AI delivers continuous posture monitoring, misconfiguration detection, and governance. Discover AI evaluates agent configurations, permissions, and blast radius to surface misconfigurations and risky integrations before they become incidents. Discover AI covers builder platforms like Bedrock Agentcore, Azure Foundry, and MS Copilot Studio.
What Ascend AI does[2][3][7][12]
Ascend AI tests for prompt injection, goal hijacking, tool misuse, and inter-agent manipulation. Ascend AI integrates into CI/CD pipelines, staging environments, and production deployments to run continuous adversarial testing. A successful Ascend AI attack can become a Defend AI policy.
What Defend AI does[2][3][8][9][12]
Defend AI detects and blocks identity abuse, memory poisoning, data exfiltration, and resource exploitation at runtime. Defend AI secures coding agents such as Cursor, GitHub Copilot, and Claude Code with runtime protection against destructive actions, data exfiltration, and malicious MCP server and Skill connections. Defend AI detects data exfiltration across SaaS applications, blocks prompt injection delivered through enterprise content like emails and documents, and surfaces unapproved agent usage.

Questions about Mindgard and Straiker

What do Mindgard and Straiker sell?
Mindgard sells AI Red Teaming and AI Security Expert. Straiker sells Discover AI, Ascend AI and Defend AI.
Are Mindgard and Straiker in the same category?
Yes. AI model and agent security is the primary category of both on CISO Tribune.
Where are Mindgard and Straiker headquartered?
Mindgard is headquartered in Boston, United States.
When were Mindgard and Straiker founded?
Mindgard was founded in 2022.
Who owns Mindgard and Straiker?
Mindgard is privately held.
Who are Mindgard and Straiker sold to?
Mindgard addresses organizations that secure the AI systems they build, buy and use.
What have Mindgard and Straiker announced recently?
August 13, 2026: Mindgard announced a $30M Series A funding round. August 11, 2026: Straiker was named an OpenAI Select Partner within the OpenAI Partner Network.

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

Straiker full record

  1. [1]AboutStraiker · straiker.ai · undated page, accessed November 5, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Straiker | The Agentic AI Security CompanyStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]AI Agent Security Platform | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  4. [4]Discover AI: AI Agent Inventory, AI-SPM & Agent-SPM | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]Security for Coding Copilots and Agents | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]AI Agent Security Testing and Red Teaming | Straiker Ascend AIStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]AI Red Teaming for Agentic Applications and AI Agents | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]AI Agent Runtime Security and Protection | Straiker Defend AIStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Runtime AI Guardrails for Agentic Applications | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]MCP & Agent Skills Security | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]GenAI and Agentic AI Threat Detection | StraikerStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]AI Agent Compliance & Governance | Visibility, Audit Trails & Runtime ControlsStraiker · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Straiker Raises $64M Series A to Secure the Agentic WorkforcePR Newswire · published June 29, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Straiker Raises $64M Series A for AI Agent SecurityStraiker · published June 29, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Straiker Launches First AI Agent Kill Switch for EnterprisesStraiker · published August 4, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]Straiker Named OpenAI Select Partner | AI Agent SecurityStraiker · published August 11, 2026 · Tier A

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