CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Straiker vs WitnessAI

Straiker lets security teams discover agents, MCP servers, and Skills, test how they can fail, and stop malicious behavior at runtime. WitnessAI sells an AI security and governance platform that brings humans and agents under one platform. CISO Tribune files both under AI firewalls and guardrails and AI governance. 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.

Change the companies

Up to four companies side by side.

  • Straiker
  • WitnessAI
Straiker vs WitnessAI: Products, Customers and Funding Compared
StraikerStraiker lets security teams discover agents, MCP servers, and Skills, test how they can fail, and stop malicious behavior at runtime.straiker.aiWitnessAIWitnessAI sells an AI security and governance platform that brings humans and agents under one platform.witness.ai
What it sells
  • 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.
  • Observe[6][11]Finds and catalogs AI applications, agents and MCP servers, and visualizes AI conversations and agentic activity.
  • Control[1][5][6][7][10][11]Governs what AI agents and employees can do, routes prompts to models based on risk or purpose, and generates audit trails.
  • Protect[1][5][6][8][11]Applies runtime security controls and content guardrails intended to block prompt injection and jailbreak attempts and filter harmful responses.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesMountain View, United States[4]
Founded
Not stated on its pages2023[3]
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesPrivately held[2][13]
Named customers
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Recent news
  • 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]
Not stated on its pages
G2 and Gartner Peer Insights
  • G2: Not stated on its pages
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
  • G2: listed, seen November 10, 2026[13]
  • Gartner Peer Insights: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
Not written yetFrom its own pages, the company sells mainly to enterprises, saying they need security and governance that extends from humans to agents. It addresses employee use of AI, citing risks around sensitive data, compliance, and shadow AI. It also addresses AI agents, which it describes as connecting to tools, accessing data, and taking actions on behalf of employees.
Last verified
November 5, 2026November 2, 2026

Where they overlap

  • Straiker and WitnessAI are both filed under AI firewalls and guardrails and AI governance.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Straiker's primary category is AI model and agent security; WitnessAI's is Workforce AI usage security.
  • Straiker lists Discover AI, Ascend AI and Defend AI. WitnessAI lists Observe, Control and Protect.
  • WitnessAI is headquartered in Mountain View, United States.
  • WitnessAI was founded in 2023.
  • WitnessAI is privately held.

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 Straiker and WitnessAI

What do Straiker and WitnessAI sell?
Straiker sells Discover AI, Ascend AI and Defend AI. WitnessAI sells Observe, Control and Protect.
Are Straiker and WitnessAI in the same category?
They share AI firewalls and guardrails and AI governance. Straiker's primary category is AI model and agent security and WitnessAI's is Workforce AI usage security.
Where are Straiker and WitnessAI headquartered?
WitnessAI is headquartered in Mountain View, United States.
When were Straiker and WitnessAI founded?
WitnessAI was founded in 2023.
Who owns Straiker and WitnessAI?
WitnessAI is privately held.
Who are Straiker and WitnessAI sold to?
From its own pages, the company sells mainly to enterprises, saying they need security and governance that extends from humans to agents.
What have Straiker and WitnessAI announced recently?
August 11, 2026: Straiker was named an OpenAI Select Partner within the OpenAI Partner Network.

About Straiker

Straiker lets security teams discover agents, MCP servers, and Skills, test how they can fail, and stop malicious behavior at runtime. Straiker's platform combines Discover AI, which maps every agent, tool, MCP, and Skill in an environment, Ascend AI, which attacks them autonomously to find what actually breaks, and Defend AI, which blocks agentic threats at runtime. Straiker includes an AI Agent Kill Switch that takes rogue agents offline. Straiker lets a team take control of a compromised agent, stopping one agent or the entire agentic estate.[2][3]

Straiker's platform covers custom applications, agent frameworks, LLM gateways, and cloud agent platforms. Straiker's platform covers coding agents, productivity agents, browser and SaaS agents, and the shadow agents nobody registered. Straiker maps agents to the models, tools, MCPs, Skills, data, permissions, and systems behind them. Straiker offers Detect or Protect modes, with policies that customers write themselves. Straiker keeps agent inventory, full agentic traces, adversarial testing history, and policy logs mapped to OWASP, MITRE ATLAS, NIST AI RMF, and the EU AI Act. STAR Labs is Straiker's AI and security research team. An attack that STAR Labs finds on Monday becomes an Ascend AI evaluation and a Defend AI detection.[3]

Straiker's Discover AI maps every AI agent, MCP server, and agentic workflow in an environment. Discover AI delivers continuous posture monitoring, misconfiguration detection, and governance. Discover AI gives full visibility into an AI agent inventory, including the MCP servers, tools, and integrations across an agentic ecosystem. Discover AI covers builder platforms like Bedrock Agentcore, Azure Foundry, and MS Copilot Studio. Straiker's AI agent discovery builds a real-time inventory of agents, tools, MCP servers, and integrations. Discover AI evaluates agent configurations, permissions, and blast radius to surface misconfigurations and risky integrations before they become incidents. Straiker detects over-permissioned agents, risky MCP connections, and misconfigured integrations across the full agentic ecosystem.[1][2][4]

Ascend AI is Straiker's adversarial testing engine for AI agents. Ascend AI tests for prompt injection, goal hijacking, tool misuse, and inter-agent manipulation. Straiker uses AI-powered attack agents that simulate real-world threats to identify vulnerabilities across the agent stack, from prompt injection and MCP tool misuse to agentic exploits, data leakage, and data exfiltration. Ascend AI integrates into CI/CD pipelines, staging environments, and production deployments to run continuous adversarial testing. Straiker runs continuous, scheduled, or on-demand agentic AI security tests across development, staging, and production environments. Straiker's continuous assessments map results to OWASP, MITRE Atlas, NIST, and EU AI Act controls. A successful Ascend AI attack can become a Defend AI policy, which connects continuous adversarial testing to runtime protection.[2][3][6][7]

Defend AI delivers runtime security for AI agents across coding copilots like Cursor, Claude Code, and GitHub Copilot, productivity agents like MS Copilot and ChatGPT Enterprise, and custom-built agents on AWS Bedrock and Azure AI Foundry. Defend AI detects and blocks identity abuse, memory poisoning, data exfiltration, and resource exploitation at runtime. Straiker inspects every prompt, reasoning step, and tool call to stop prompt injection, data exfiltration, and agent manipulation in real time. Straiker identifies malicious or vulnerable MCP servers and tool connections in real time, backed by its MCP Threat Database. Straiker detects threats hidden in text, code, images, audio, and file uploads. Straiker's guardrails support soft detection mode for visibility and hard blocking mode for high-severity threats. Defend AI controls are configurable to enterprise-specific policies, risk thresholds, and regulatory requirements including PCI-DSS, HIPAA, NIST AI RMF, and SOC2. Straiker offers a one-line install via API, SDK, webhook, or AI sensor with no thick clients, proxies, firewalls, or infrastructure changes required.[2][8][9]

Straiker currently supports Cursor Agent, GitHub Copilot, Claude Code, and Windsurf. Straiker secures Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers and agent skills across their lifecycle. Straiker uses a See-Test-Protect approach for MCP security. Straiker analyzes MCP server code and agent skills for malicious instructions, risky capabilities, remote code execution, credential theft, persistence, data exfiltration, and obfuscation. Straiker's detection engine analyzes agentic traces and AI interactions to catch attacks. Straiker's detection can be deployed via AI Gateway, API/SDK, eBPF sensors, or lightweight proxy. Straiker has purpose-built detectors for prompt injection, tool misuse, data exfiltration, resource exhaustion, and emerging threat patterns.[5][10][11]

Straiker offers continuous compliance visibility and runtime governance for AI agents, MCP toolchains, and prompts. Straiker provides both AI governance and AI runtime security through its integrated Discover AI, Ascend AI, and Defend AI portfolio.[1][3][5][12]

Straiker on the record

Sources

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

WitnessAI full record

  1. [1]Unified AI Security and Governance Platform | WitnessAIWitnessAI · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Witnessai raises 58 million for global expansion and announces new ways to secure ai agents 302659319WitnessAI via PR Newswire · prnewswire.com · published January 13, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Witnessai launches with guardrails for aiDark Reading · darkreading.com · published May 21, 2024 · Tier B
  4. [4]WitnessaiAppSec Santa · appsecsanta.com · published April 3, 2026 · Tier C
  5. [5]Scaling AI Security with WitnessAI - WitnessAIWitnessAI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]AI Security Platform | Enterprise AI Governance | WitnessAIWitnessAI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]WitnessAI 2.0 Delivers New Regulatory Compliance Capabilities to Support Safe AI Adoption - WitnessAIWitnessAI · published April 30, 2025 · Tier A
  8. [8]Ensuring Compliance with the EU AI Act - WitnessAIWitnessAI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]WitnessAI Achieves SOC 2 Type II Compliance - WitnessAIWitnessAI · published October 21, 2025 · Tier A
  10. [10]WitnessAI Joins ServiceNow Control Tower Alliance - WitnessAIWitnessAI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]TENEX.AI and WitnessAI Partner to Deliver Managed Security and Compliance Services for Enterprise AI - WitnessAIWitnessAI · published June 17, 2025 · Tier A
  12. [12]How Security Leaders Prove ROI and Reduce Risk - WitnessAIWitnessAI · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]WitnessAI Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & FeaturesG2 · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier C

Spot a factual error? Request a correction.