THE FULL AI SECURITY LANDSCAPE

56 companies, what each one actually does, and whether you would run it alongside Mountain Theory or instead of it. Most of this market is complementary. 41 of these work alongside us, 9 are genuine head-to-heads, and 6 do a different job entirely.

Mountain Theory sits at the execution layer: it checks the action an AI is about to take against your policy and returns ALLOW, HOLD or BLOCK. Almost nothing else in this table does that, which is why so many of these pair with us rather than compete.

Showing 56 of 56 companies

The AI security landscape as of August 2026. Compiled by Mountain Theory.
CompanyWhat they doWith Mountain Theory
ZenityInline agent runtime securityControls agent actions inline inside Microsoft Foundry, Copilot Studio, AWS Bedrock and OpenAI AgentKit.Head to headRarely both. If all your agents live in those platforms Zenity covers them; Mountain Theory reaches the custom and on-prem agents that never touch those control planes.
Capsule SecurityAI agent runtime securityOpen-source ClawGuard checkpoint that assesses agent intent before a tool call.Head to headStart with ClawGuard if you are a developer team. Move to Mountain Theory when policy needs an owner outside engineering and an auditor needs evidence.
Eve SecurityAgentic AI intent and policyInfers intent across multi-step reasoning chains to detect goal drift, with Agent-in-the-Loop review.Head to headBoth check before the action. Eve reasons probabilistically about intent; Mountain Theory checks the action deterministically so the answer is auditable.
Sondera.aiDeterministic policy enforcementOpen-source harness that compiles natural-language rules into formally verified Cedar policy and enforces outside the model.Head to headClosest philosophy in the market. Sondera for coding agents inside dev frameworks; Mountain Theory for production agents across the business.
Geordie AIAI agent security and governanceMaps the agentic footprint across an enterprise and applies automated mitigations at platform level.Works alongsideGeordie tells you where your agents are. Mountain Theory governs what they do. Discovery feeds enforcement.
StraikerAgentic AI securityRuntime protection for AI agents, aimed at enterprises and frontier labs.Head to headSimilar problem statement. Evaluate on whether control is model and framework agnostic and whether policy is written by the risk owner.
Trent AIAI agent securitySecurity for autonomous AI agents. London-based, backed by OpenAI, Spotify and Databricks operators.Head to headSame category, earlier stage. Worth watching rather than displacing today.
MultifactorMulti-agent security controlsVerifiable, fine-grained controls for complex multi-agent systems, built for CISOs.Head to headOverlapping intent on multi-agent estates. Very early.
Operant AIMCP and runtime securityRuntime security for AI applications and MCP deployments.Works alongsideOperant secures the protocol path. Mountain Theory governs the action once a tool call is made, whatever route it arrived by.
RunlayerMCP securitySecurity for MCP server deployments. First mover on the protocol.Works alongsideRun both if MCP is central. They harden the connection, we govern the action it enables.
Astrix Security (Cisco)Non-human identityDiscovers and governs API keys, service accounts, OAuth tokens and AI agent identities. Acquired by Cisco.Works alongsideRun both. Astrix establishes who the agent is and that its credentials are sound. Mountain Theory decides whether the action it is attempting is allowed right now.
SaviyntAI identity and access managementExtends enterprise IAM to AI agents with an identity control plane.Works alongsideRun both. Saviynt authorises the identity at session start; Mountain Theory authorises every action after it.
Oasis SecurityNon-human identity managementMachine identity lifecycle: discovery, governance and remediation of NHIs.Works alongsideRun both. Credential hygiene lowers how often a wrong actor acts; execution control decides whether the act goes through.
WideField Security (Cisco)Identity lifecycle for the agentic SOCIdentity, credential and session intelligence feeding Splunk investigations. Acquired by Cisco.Works alongsideSequential. WideField helps the SOC understand an agentic incident; Mountain Theory reduces how many reach the SOC.
HiddenLayerAI model and agentic runtime securityScans model artifacts across 35+ formats and defends at inference without needing weights, training data or prompts.Works alongsideRun both. HiddenLayer tells you the model is trustworthy. Mountain Theory governs what a trustworthy model then does.
Noma SecurityUnified AI and agent securityAI asset discovery, data context, posture management and an agentic risk map.Works alongsideRun both in a large estate. Noma shows exposure; Mountain Theory intercepts the transaction.
Protect AI (Palo Alto)ML security platformModel scanning, posture, red teaming and runtime, now the core of Prisma AIRS.Works alongsideNow part of Palo Alto. See the Prisma AIRS entry.
Robust Intelligence (Cisco)AI firewall and red teamingAI Firewall for real-time model protection, now Cisco AI Defense.Works alongsideContent and model protection. Mountain Theory covers the action layer neither addresses.
Oligo SecurityApplication-level AI integrityeBPF kernel-level runtime monitoring of AI workloads, catching library-level exploits.Works alongsideDifferent depth of the stack. Oligo watches the workload; Mountain Theory gates the action.
MindgardAI red teamingFirst DAST for AI. Continuous automated red teaming with a large attack library.Works alongsideTesting, not enforcement. Mindgard finds the weakness; Mountain Theory is what stops it being exploited in production.
TrojAI (A10 Networks)AI red teaming and runtime protectionRed teaming that probes models, agents and applications at build time, plus real-time threat protection at runtime. Acquired by A10 Networks, announced 15 June 2026, to support sovereign AI security.Works alongsideBuild-time assurance plus their own runtime layer, now inside a network infrastructure vendor. Their runtime defends the model and the application. Mountain Theory governs the action a clean model triggers, so the two sit at different points and most estates would run both.
Haize LabsAI safety ratingsRed teaming that produces safety ratings, working with frontier labs.Different jobRatings and benchmarks. Different buyer, different purpose.
NoveeAutonomous AI pen testingAutonomous black-box red teaming with a proprietary AI attacker.Different jobOffensive testing. Complements any defensive control including ours.
SPLX (Zscaler)AI runtime protection and guardrailsInline prompt and output filtering, natural-language policy, red teaming, now inside Zscaler.Works alongsideRun both. SPLX stops the model saying something unsafe; Mountain Theory stops the agent doing something unsafe. Different failure.
Prompt Security (SentinelOne)GenAI securityInspects every prompt and response for DLP, injection and jailbreaks. Now in Singularity.Works alongsideContent safety. Sits before the action layer, not on it.
Lakera (Check Point)GenAI securityReal-time protection from prompt injection, data leakage and toxic content.Works alongsidePrompt-layer defence. Mountain Theory is the backstop for when the prompt filter is beaten.
Guardrails AIOpen-source LLM guardrailsProgrammable guardrails on LLM outputs, developer-first.Works alongsideOutput validation. Pairs with, does not substitute for, execution control.
Virtue AIAI security and complianceMulti-modal guardrail suite with continuous model benchmarking, strong academic pedigree.Works alongsideContent and model assurance alongside action control.
Galileo AIAI evaluation platformEvaluation foundation models detecting hallucination, injection, PII and toxicity in real time.Works alongsideOutput quality and safety. Different question from whether an action should run.
Patronus AILLM evaluation and testingAutomated evaluation detecting LLM mistakes at scale.Different jobEvaluation tooling. Rarely in the same procurement.
Arthur AIAI monitoring and governanceMonitoring, evaluation and governance with an LLM firewall, pivoting to agentic governance.Works alongsideObservability plus governance. Mountain Theory supplies the enforcement they describe.
AurascapeAI-native security layerReal-time visibility and intent-based controls across thousands of AI applications.Works alongsideBreadth across AI app usage. Complements depth at the execution boundary.
Promptfoo (OpenAI)LLM security testingOpen-source CLI for adversarial testing of LLM apps. Acquired by OpenAI.Different jobDeveloper testing tool. Not an enforcement product.
Lasso SecurityLLM security and MCP gatewaysShadow AI discovery, data-flow monitoring and MCP gateways, distributed via Cloudflare.Works alongsideRun both. Lasso controls the user-to-model boundary; Mountain Theory governs what an agent already inside your systems does.
ThalesAI runtime data securityAI Security Fabric controlling which data agents may access, with an MCP gateway on the 2026 roadmap.Works alongsideRun both in regulated estates. Thales is the data vault; Mountain Theory is the decision gate.
CalypsoAI (F5)Inference securityRed teaming and real-time threat defence at the inference layer. Acquired by F5.Works alongsideInference-layer defence, complementary to action control.
Nightfall AICloud-native DLP for AIML data discovery, classification and protection across SaaS, APIs and browsers.Works alongsideData loss prevention. Different object entirely.
LiminalSecure multi-model AI accessIntelligent data masking rather than redaction, single-tenant, for regulated industries.Works alongsideProtects the data in the prompt. Mountain Theory protects the system from the action.
WitnessAIAI governance and securityVisibility, control and compliance for enterprise AI usage.Works alongsideUsage governance alongside action enforcement.
Harmonic SecurityAI data loss preventionDLP purpose-built for AI workflows rather than retrofitted.Works alongsideData-layer control, complementary.
Pillar SecurityAI lifecycle securityDiscovery, testing and adaptive guardrails across the AI lifecycle.Head to headBreadth versus depth. Pillar covers the lifecycle; Mountain Theory is deeper at the one boundary that stops an action.
Credo AIAI governance platformAI governance, risk and compliance programme management.Works alongsideRun both. Credo produces the policy and the paperwork; Mountain Theory is what actually enforces it.
Palo Alto Networks (Prisma AIRS)Platform AI securityModel scanning, posture, red teaming and runtime across the AI lifecycle, from the Protect AI acquisition.Head to headOften the default if you already run Palo Alto. Ask what stops a custom agent on your own infrastructure tonight.
Cisco (AI Defense)Platform AI and identity securityAI Defense plus Astrix and WideField, building an identity-led trust layer for agentic AI.Works alongsideStrong on identity and investigation. Mountain Theory supplies inline action enforcement.
MicrosoftPlatform AI securitySecurity Copilot, Agent 365 control plane and an agent governance toolkit.Works alongsidePlatform-native controls for Microsoft-hosted agents. Mountain Theory reaches everything else.
GoogleCloud AI securityAI-SPM and AI protection through Wiz, plus the A2A protocol.Works alongsideCloud-native posture. Complementary to execution control.
SentinelOneEndpoint and AI securitySingularity platform with Prompt AI Agent Security from the Prompt Security acquisition.Works alongsideEndpoint and content security. Different layer.
CrowdStrikeEndpoint and agent securityFalcon and AIDR, expanding into AI identity through SGNL and Pangea.Works alongsideEndpoint and identity strength. Mountain Theory governs the action.
Check PointNetwork and AI securityInfinity AI with Lakera for AI-native detection.Works alongsideNetwork and prompt layers, complementary.
DarktraceAI anomaly detectionSelf-learning anomaly detection moving into AI tool security.Works alongsideDetection and anomaly. Mountain Theory is prevention at the action.
UpwindRuntime-first CNAPPRuntime cloud security with AI posture, inventory and behaviour tracing via eBPF.Works alongsideRun both. Upwind explains what happened across your cloud; Mountain Theory decides whether it happens.
Apex Security (Tenable)AI visibility and policyAI activity visibility and policy enforcement. Acquired by Tenable.Works alongsideVisibility layer, complementary.
PindropVoice biometric AI securityDeepfake detection and authentication for the voice channel.Works alongsideRun both if you operate voice AI. They authenticate one channel; we govern action across all of them.
ZeroDriftAI communications complianceChecks every AI-generated message against SEC, FINRA, HIPAA and firm policy before it sends.Works alongsideRun both in financial services. ZeroDrift governs what AI says; Mountain Theory governs what it does.
7AIAgentic SOC automationAutonomous AI agents automating security operations work.Different jobAI for security rather than security for AI. Notably, their agents are themselves something you would want governed.
ArmadinAutonomous AI SecOpsAgentic security operations, founded by the Mandiant founder.Different jobSame note: an autonomous SecOps agent is a strong candidate for execution-layer control.

See the detailed head-to-head comparisons

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