CISO Tribune

Vendor comparison · 2 companies

Straiker vs Zenity

Straiker lets security teams discover agents, MCP servers, and Skills, test how they can fail, and stop malicious behavior at runtime. Zenity sells an AI agent security platform built to govern how agents behave, not just what they say or generate. CISO Tribune files both under AI model and agent security 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.

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  • Straiker
  • Zenity
Straiker vs Zenity: 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.aiZenityZenity sells an AI agent security platform built to govern how agents behave, not just what they say or generate.zenity.io
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.
  • AI Observability[5]Builds a live inventory of every agent across an organization's environment and tracks the data those agents access.
  • AI Security Posture Management (AISPM)[7]Evaluates configuration, permissions, and integrations before an agent goes live.
  • Boundaries[4][6][8]Evaluates every agent action in real time against an organization's rules and decides to let it through, block it, or shut the agent down.
  • AI Detection and Response (AIDR)[9]AIDR reads the full sequence of an agent's activity, detecting threats mapped to the OWASP LLM and MITRE ATLAS frameworks.
  • Zenity Security Assessment Hub[13]A set of 10 free, open-source tools built by Zenity Labs to help security teams identify and understand immediate risks.
Categories
Headquarters
Not stated on its pagesNot stated on its pages
Founded
Not stated on its pages2021[2]
Ownership and funding
Not stated on its pagesPrivately held[3][6][17]
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]
  • September 23, 2026Zenity was named a Market Shaper in Gartner's inaugural Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security.[15]
  • August 3, 2026Zenity announced a $125 million Series C round led by Norwest.[14]
  • June 17, 2026Zenity and Carahsoft announced a partnership under which Carahsoft serves as Zenity's Public Sector distributor.[17]
  • March 17, 2026Zenity announced general availability of runtime security controls for AI agents built on Microsoft Foundry.[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: Not stated on its pages
Who it fits
Not written yetZenity describes a global financial services firm and a global asset manager as organizations that write policy rules for agents. Zenity covers agents embedded in SaaS tools, home-grown agentic platforms in the cloud, and end-user devices. Zenity gives security and platform teams a single place to surface, enforce, and protect MCP usage.
Last verified
November 5, 2026November 9, 2026

Where they overlap

  • AI model and agent security is the primary category of both Straiker and Zenity; both are also filed under AI governance.

Where they differ, field by field

  • Straiker is also filed under AI firewalls and guardrails.
  • Straiker lists Discover AI, Ascend AI and Defend AI. Zenity lists AI Observability, AI Security Posture Management (AISPM), Boundaries, AI Detection and Response (AIDR) and Zenity Security Assessment Hub.
  • Zenity was founded in 2021.
  • Zenity is privately held.

How they differ

CISO Tribune files both Straiker and Zenity under AI model and agent security as their primary category, with Straiker also filed under AI firewalls and guardrails and AI governance, and Zenity under AI governance. Straiker sells three products: Discover AI maps agents, MCP servers and agentic workflows, Ascend AI is an adversarial testing engine, and Defend AI provides runtime security for AI agents. Zenity sells AI Observability for agent inventory, AI Security Posture Management (AISPM) for configuration and permissions, Boundaries for runtime enforcement, and AI Detection and Response (AIDR). Zenity also offers the Zenity Security Assessment Hub, a set of 10 free, open-source tools built by Zenity Labs.

Straiker includes Ascend AI, which tests for prompt injection, goal hijacking, tool misuse, and inter-agent manipulation, and a successful attack can become a Defend AI policy. Zenity's Boundaries applies a rule written once across Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, Agentforce, Bedrock, coding agents, and homegrown builds. Straiker launched the Agentic Kill Switch on August 4, 2026, and Zenity's Boundaries can let an action through, block it, or shut the agent down.

Zenity was founded in 2021 and is privately held. Zenity announced a $125 million Series C round led by Norwest on August 3, 2026. Straiker announced a $64 million Series A on June 29, 2026, bringing its total funding to $85 million. Zenity describes a global financial services firm and a global asset manager as organizations that write policy rules for agents. Straiker was named an OpenAI Select Partner on August 11, 2026, and Zenity was named a Market Shaper in Gartner's inaugural Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security on September 23, 2026.

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.

What it sells: Zenity

What AI Observability does[5]
AI Observability is Zenity's discovery and visibility layer for AI agents. Data Lens surfaces sensitive files and pages that are both frequently accessed and broadly exposed across agents.
What AI Security Posture Management (AISPM) does[7]
AISPM evaluates configuration and permissions for agents embedded in platforms like Microsoft Copilot Studio, ChatGPT Enterprise, and Salesforce Agentforce. AISPM applies stricter enforcement in production and more flexible policy in development or sandbox environments.
What Boundaries does[4][6][8]
Boundaries is Zenity's runtime enforcement engine. A rule written once in Boundaries is enforced on Copilot, ChatGPT Enterprise, Agentforce, Bedrock, coding agents, and homegrown builds. Boundaries includes a built-in AI assistant that turns a plain-language request into a working rule.
What AI Detection and Response (AIDR) does[9]
AI Detection and Response (AIDR) is Zenity's runtime security layer for AI agents. AIDR detects direct and indirect prompt injection and blocks execution before the agent acts on them. AIDR breaks every agent interaction into individual steps and groups them by thread in a single activity table.
What Zenity Security Assessment Hub does[13]
The Zenity Security Assessment Hub is built by Zenity Labs. The tools take a Red-Team approach to visualize threats across Microsoft 365, with a focus on 365 Copilot, Copilot Studio, and Power Platform.

Questions about Straiker and Zenity

What do Straiker and Zenity sell?
Straiker sells Discover AI, Ascend AI and Defend AI. Zenity sells AI Observability, AI Security Posture Management (AISPM), Boundaries, AI Detection and Response (AIDR) and Zenity Security Assessment Hub.
Are Straiker and Zenity in the same category?
Yes. AI model and agent security is the primary category of both on CISO Tribune.
When were Straiker and Zenity founded?
Zenity was founded in 2021.
Who owns Straiker and Zenity?
Zenity is privately held.
Who are Straiker and Zenity sold to?
Zenity describes a global financial services firm and a global asset manager as organizations that write policy rules for agents.
What have Straiker and Zenity announced recently?
August 11, 2026: Straiker was named an OpenAI Select Partner within the OpenAI Partner Network. September 23, 2026: Zenity was named a Market Shaper in Gartner's inaugural Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security.

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

Zenity full record

  1. [1]AI Agent Security and Governance | Zenity AI Security PlatformZenity · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  2. [2]Zenity announces strategic investment led by m12Zenity · zenity.io · undated page, accessed September 27, 2026 · Tier A
  3. [3]Zenity raises 38m series b funding round to secure agentic aiZenity · zenity.io · published October 29, 2024 · Tier A
  4. [4]AI Agent Security & Governance Platform for the Enterprise | ZenityZenity · undated page, accessed October 30, 2026 · Tier A
  5. [5]AI Observability | Zenity AI Security PlatformZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  6. [6]AI Agent Security | Model Context Protocol (MCP) | ZenityZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  7. [7]AI Security Posture Management | Zenity AI Security PlatformZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  8. [8]Runtime Boundaries | Zenity AI Security PlatformZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  9. [9]AI Detection and Response (AIDRZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  10. [10]Agentic Identity & Access Management: Zenity AI Security PlatformZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  11. [11]Securing Financial Services AI | Zenity, Microsoft & SlalomZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  12. [12]Company | Zenity | Secure AI Agents EverywhereZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  13. [13]Zenity Security Assessment Hub | Zenity | Secure AI Agents EverywhereZenity · undated page, accessed November 10, 2026 · Tier A
  14. [14]Zenity Raises $125 Million to Secure the Era of 1 Billion AI AgentsZenity · published August 3, 2026 · Tier A
  15. [15]Zenity Named a Market Shaper in Gartner’s Inaugural Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application SecurityZenity · published September 23, 2026 · Tier A
  16. [16]Zenity Announces Availability of Inline Agent Runtime Security for Agents Built on Microsoft FoundryZenity · published March 17, 2026 · Tier A
  17. [17]Zenity and Carahsoft Bring AI Agent Security and Governance to Federal, State and Local AgenciesZenity · published June 17, 2026 · Tier A

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