CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Obsidian Security vs WatchGuard Technologies

Obsidian Security sells real-time visibility, continuous governance and runtime enforcement over agents, identities and integrations across third-party apps. WatchGuard Technologies sells a Unified Security Platform that combines network, endpoint, identity and cloud protection, purpose-built for MSPs servicing midsize companies and SMBs. CISO Tribune files both under Identity threat detection and response. 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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  • Obsidian Security
  • WatchGuard Technologies
Obsidian Security vs WatchGuard Technologies: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
Obsidian SecurityObsidian Security sells real-time visibility, continuous governance and runtime enforcement over agents, identities and integrations across third-party apps.obsidiansecurity.comWatchGuard TechnologiesWatchGuard Technologies sells a Unified Security Platform that combines network, endpoint, identity and cloud protection, purpose-built for MSPs servicing midsize companies and SMBs.watchguard.com
What it sells
  • Continuous GovernanceChecks each requirement, written once, in each connected app that exposes the data it needs.
  • Unified Security Platform[1][5]WatchGuard unifies network, endpoint, identity and cloud protection under one agent, one console and one AI intelligence layer.
  • Firebox M Series[9]Firebox M Series rackmount appliances provide NGFW features.
  • Endpoint Security 360[11]WatchGuard Endpoint Security 360 is an autonomous zero trust endpoint detection and response solution.
  • AuthPoint[7][12][13]WatchGuard AuthPoint provides cloud-based authentication and access to applications.
  • Total Identity Security[13]Total Identity Security combines AuthPoint MFA with Dark Web Credential Monitoring.
  • WatchGuard Cloud[1][5][7][9][13]WatchGuard Cloud is built for MSPs and gives one place to deploy, standardize, monitor and report across all customers.
  • Compliance Reporting[15]WatchGuard Compliance Reporting offers configurable compliance controls and reports for regulatory needs.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesSeattle, United States[4]
Founded
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Ownership and funding
Privately held[1]Owned by Vector Capital since 2022[6]
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
  • August 4, 2026Obsidian Security said it raised $85 million in a Series D funding round that valued the company at $1.1 billion.[15]
  • July 7, 2026WatchGuard Technologies appointed Vincent Hwang as Chief Product Officer, reporting to CEO Joe Smolarski.[16]
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: listed, seen October 30, 2026[6]
Who it fits
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.WatchGuard delivers its security to businesses exclusively through managed service provider and reseller partners. Businesses receive protection configured and managed for them by a local WatchGuard partner. WatchGuard describes its devices as suited to securing branch offices, distributed networks and large data centers. WatchGuard secure access points are described for small offices, retail locations, schools, warehouses and outdoor deployments. WatchGuard Endpoint Security 360 is described as suited to organizations and MSPs.
Last verified
November 4, 2026September 27, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Obsidian Security and WatchGuard Technologies are both filed under Identity threat detection and response.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Obsidian Security's primary category is SaaS security posture; WatchGuard Technologies's is Firewalls and NGFW.
  • Obsidian Security is also filed under AI model and agent security and Workforce AI usage security. WatchGuard Technologies is also filed under EDR and XDR and Workforce IAM and SSO.
  • Obsidian Security lists Continuous Governance. WatchGuard Technologies lists Unified Security Platform, Firebox M Series, Endpoint Security 360, AuthPoint, Total Identity Security and 2 more.
  • WatchGuard Technologies is headquartered in Seattle, United States.
  • Obsidian Security is privately held. WatchGuard Technologies is owned by Vector Capital, since 2022.

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.

What it sells: WatchGuard Technologies

What Firebox M Series does[9]
Firebox M Series rackmount appliances provide NGFW features. Firebox rackmount appliances integrate with WatchGuard Cloud and ThreatSync and offer centralized management and AI-powered XDR correlation.
What Endpoint Security 360 does[11]
WatchGuard Endpoint Security 360 is an autonomous zero trust endpoint detection and response solution that blocks unknown applications automatically and continuously monitors trusted applications for signs of compromise. WatchGuard Endpoint Security 360 provides visibility into blocked executions, compromised trusted applications and the progression of attacks across endpoints.
What AuthPoint does[7][12][13]
WatchGuard AuthPoint provides cloud-based authentication and access to applications. AuthPoint MFA supports push, passkeys, TOTP, QR codes, hardware tokens and zero trust policies. AuthPoint is managed in WatchGuard Cloud, which configures policies, synchronizes users and enforces controls from one interface.
What Total Identity Security does[13]
Total Identity Security combines AuthPoint MFA with Dark Web Credential Monitoring. WatchGuard continuously monitors workforce user credentials across dark web, deep web and breach databases using AI-driven intelligence, and can alert affected end users directly. WatchGuard Cloud lets MSPs manage MFA and credential monitoring across customer accounts.
What WatchGuard Cloud does[1][5][7][9][13]
WatchGuard Cloud is built for MSPs and gives one place to deploy, standardize, monitor and report across all customers. ThreatSync XDR is part of WatchGuard Cloud and correlates activity across WatchGuard security layers. WatchGuard Cloud provides visibility, configuration control and real-time threat monitoring so MSPs can manage network security from anywhere with an Internet connection.
What Compliance Reporting does[15]
WatchGuard Compliance Reporting offers configurable compliance controls and reports for regulatory needs. WatchGuard Compliance Reporting is integrated with WatchGuard NDR and WatchGuard SaaS, delivering over 100 AI-refined network cybersecurity controls. WatchGuard Compliance Reporting includes configurable compliance report templates for ISO-27001, NIST 800-53, NIST 171/CMMC, UK Cyber Essentials, FFIEC, CISA Ransomware Defense, Cyber Insurance Compliance and Supply Chain Compliance.

Questions about Obsidian Security and WatchGuard Technologies

What do Obsidian Security and WatchGuard Technologies sell?
Obsidian Security sells Continuous Governance. WatchGuard Technologies sells Unified Security Platform, Firebox M Series, Endpoint Security 360, AuthPoint, Total Identity Security and 2 more.
Are Obsidian Security and WatchGuard Technologies in the same category?
They share Identity threat detection and response. Obsidian Security's primary category is SaaS security posture and WatchGuard Technologies's is Firewalls and NGFW.
Where are Obsidian Security and WatchGuard Technologies headquartered?
WatchGuard Technologies is headquartered in Seattle, United States.
Who owns Obsidian Security and WatchGuard Technologies?
Obsidian Security is privately held. WatchGuard Technologies is owned by Vector Capital, since 2022.
Who are Obsidian Security and WatchGuard Technologies sold to?
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. WatchGuard delivers its security to businesses exclusively through managed service provider and reseller partners.
What have Obsidian Security and WatchGuard Technologies 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. July 7, 2026: WatchGuard Technologies appointed Vincent Hwang as Chief Product Officer, reporting to CEO Joe Smolarski.

About Obsidian Security

Obsidian Security sells real-time visibility, continuous governance and runtime enforcement over agents, identities and integrations across third-party apps. Obsidian Security provides guardrails and real-time controls for AI agents that need access to third-party apps. The Obsidian platform turns billions of signals across business critical applications into security intelligence to protect users, agents, and data. Obsidian Security collects and connects third-party app and AI configurations, user activity, real-world threat signals, and browser telemetry.[3][4][13]

Obsidian Security says enterprise data lives in Salesforce, Workday, ServiceNow and 35K+ third-party enterprise apps that customers do not own. Obsidian Security says non-human identities now outnumber people inside the enterprise application estate. Obsidian Security says every AI application and agent connected to an enterprise inherits the permissions and trust misconfigurations that already existed in enterprise applications. Obsidian Security says vibe-coded workflows connect straight into Salesforce, Snowflake, Workday, and Slack, often before anyone has reviewed them. Obsidian Security spent years mapping every identity, permission, and data flow across third-party enterprise applications. Obsidian Security gives customers visibility into what is connected, controls to enforce what is allowed, and clarity on what needs to change.[3][5]

Obsidian Security has over 200 integrations into SaaS and AI applications that pull posture and activity data. The Obsidian browser extension captures real-time user and AI agent activity. Obsidian Security normalizes every human and non-human identity, entitlement, access, and action and connects them in a knowledge graph. The Obsidian Knowledge Graph maps the relationships between identities, permissions, and actions. Obsidian Security layers configuration, policy, and ownership data together to surface misconfigurations and privilege overlaps. Obsidian Security builds machine learning baselines from real enterprise behavior, refined by what it learns from actual incidents. Obsidian Security normalizes and correlates 29+ billion events from third-party applications every month and feeds them back into the platform. Obsidian Security builds detections from how attackers acted across 500+ real breach responses with DFIR firms. When one customer identifies and removes a risky integration or access pattern, Obsidian Security shares that signal automatically across every environment it protects. Obsidian Security provides out-of-the-box detection rules mapped to the MITRE ATT&CK framework and machine learning models based on real incident data. Obsidian Security integrates with SIEM and SOAR platforms for automated workflows. Obsidian Security provides an AI extension of the security team that explains rules, triages threats, and manages exceptions.[4][6][7][8][13]

Obsidian Security centralizes AI agent policy and enforces it at runtime across coding agents, agent platforms, MCP connections, and existing gateways. Obsidian Security agent policies use who the agent acts for, that person's employment status, and the team's data labels to tell a routine action from a risky one. Obsidian Security agent policies hold or block only the agent actions that match their conditions, and tool calls that match no policy proceed. Obsidian Security lets teams test each policy against real agent traffic before it stops anything. Obsidian Security says employees can connect AI agents to apps such as Salesforce, Snowflake, Slack, and Google Drive through MCP. The Obsidian proxy evaluates MCP traffic at each step of a session, including the app the agent can reach, the records it can list, and each tool call. The Obsidian proxy maps each MCP session to the person who started it, their account in the app, and the workspace, org, or instance the session reaches. With the Obsidian proxy, agents receive a proxy-issued token, and each user authorizes the app through the vendor's own consent flow.[5][9][10]

Obsidian Security monitors every new and existing MCP server in an environment with one dashboard. Obsidian Security shows MCP servers across AI agent platforms such as n8n and Microsoft Copilot. Obsidian Security raises risk alerts when agents connect to MCP servers without authentication. Obsidian Security helps teams spot unvetted or suspicious MCP servers and remove them.[11]

Obsidian Security maps supported identity, permission, configuration, and activity data to one control model. Obsidian Security provides mappings to NIST, CIS, ISO 27001, and GDPR. Obsidian Security continuously checks supported controls and shows what changed. Obsidian Security attaches the available identity, permission, and ownership context to each finding so teams can find the cause and route the fix. Obsidian Security routes fixes through Jira, ServiceNow, and other supported tools. Obsidian Security fixes misconfigurations, removes high-risk integrations, and stops malicious activity in third-party apps. Obsidian Security detects and removes risky or unauthorized AI agent actions in third-party apps. Obsidian Security pairs inline defenses against credential and session theft with alerts for investigation and response. Obsidian Security monitors configuration drift and spots violations to automate compliance reporting. Obsidian Security discovers app sprawl, including unsanctioned AI and shadow SaaS. Obsidian Security offers coverage for organisations of up to 1K users.[12][13][14]

Obsidian Security committed to securing identity and SaaS apps, which it describes as a new attack surface that nobody was watching. Security teams at large financial services and technology companies adopted Obsidian Security to detect account takeovers, SaaS threats and privilege misuse. Obsidian Security is backed by IVP, Norwest, and GV. Obsidian Security announced an $85M Series D led by Crescent Cove Advisors.[2][5][7][11][12][13]

Obsidian Security on the record

Sources

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

WatchGuard Technologies full record

  1. [1]watchguard.comWatchGuard Technologies · watchguard.com · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Watchguard launches new high performance firebox appliances secure modernWatchGuard Technologies · watchguard.com · published June 2, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]vectorcapital.comVector Capital · vectorcapital.com · published July 5, 2022 · Tier A
  4. [4]Dex991WatchGuard Technologies via SEC EDGAR · sec.gov · published July 25, 2006 · Tier A
  5. [5]WatchGuard | Comprehensive Cybersecurity SolutionsWatchGuard Technologies · undated page, accessed October 30, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]WatchGuard Reviews, Ratings & Features 2026 | Gartner Peer InsightsGartner Peer Insights · undated page, accessed October 30, 2026 · Tier C
  7. [7]Centralized Management & Visibility | WatchGuard CloudWatchGuard Technologies · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Managed Security Services for MSPs | WatchGuardWatchGuard Technologies · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]Rackmount Firewall Appliances | WatchGuardWatchGuard Technologies · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]WatchGuard Endpoint Security | AI-Powered ProtectionWatchGuard Technologies · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]WatchGuard Endpoint Security 360 - Zero Trust EDRWatchGuard Technologies · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]AuthPoint 30-Day Free Trial | WatchGuard Free AuthPointWatchGuard Technologies · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]AuthPoint Total Identity Security | WatchGuardWatchGuard Technologies · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Secure Wireless APs for Your Business | WatchGuardWatchGuard Technologies · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Compliance Reporting | WatchGuardWatchGuard Technologies · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]WatchGuard Appoints Vincent Hwang as Chief Product OfficerWatchGuard Technologies · published July 7, 2026 · Tier A

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