Agentic Index
Pillar Security vs Straiker (2026)
Both vendors last verified
Pillar Security and Straiker both find the customer's agents, red team them and guard them at runtime, and both can run inside the customer's own environment. That verdict is the Agentic Index coverage score, graded from each vendor's own published materials.
Pillar maps exploitable paths across tools, prompts and data with RedGraph, runs multi turn and black box attacks, logs every tool call and deploys in the customer's VPC, and it sells through a demo. Straiker red teams with attack agents on every model deployment or prompt change and traces and blocks at runtime, as SaaS or on premises, with AWS Marketplace listing platform access at $100,000 a year. Choose Pillar for attack path mapping, and Straiker for testing on every change with a listed price.
On the Agentic Index AI SOC ranking, neither Pillar Security nor Straiker clears the bar, which asks for all five investigation loop capabilities documented in full. Pillar Security does not document workflow orchestration in full, nor human oversight and guardrails; Straiker does not document human oversight and guardrails in full. 25 of the 86 vendors in the lane clear it. See the AI SOC ranking
On the Agentic Index agent infrastructure ranking, neither Pillar Security nor Straiker clears the bar, which asks for all five production contract capabilities documented in full. Neither documents security and identity governance in full, nor model flexibility and routing. 33 of the 186 vendors in the lane clear it. See the agent infrastructure ranking
This comparison is published by Agentic Index, an independent agentic AI vendor research platform. Pillar Security and Straiker are each graded against the same 14 capability Agentic Index taxonomy, from the vendor's own public materials under the Agentic Index verification standard, alongside 1,084 researched vendors. No vendor pays for placement and no vendor has reviewed this page. How this evidence is graded
Choose Pillar Security if
- You want a map of how tools, prompts and data combine into attack paths.
- Black box testing matters alongside multi turn attacks.
- A demo led start suits you better than a listed contract.
Choose Straiker if
- Testing should trigger on every model or prompt change.
- Attack agents should rerun on every model deployment or prompt change.
- A listed price on AWS Marketplace simplifies procurement.
| Feature | P Pillar Security |
S Straiker |
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| Action & orchestration | ||
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Integrations & Tool Calling Ability to connect agents to real systems through native integrations, OAuth-authenticated actions, custom tools, APIs, webhooks, or MCP-compatible tools. |
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Pillar SecurityIntegrations & Tool Calling Discovery connects across the customer's environment to inventory agents and models along with MCP servers and tools. Runtime guardrails block and redact agent traffic, and telemetry streams to SIEM platforms. Discovery reaches code repositories, cloud infrastructure, AI platforms and MCP servers, and the guardrails plug into AI gateways such as LiteLLM, Kong, TrueFoundry and Agent Router. SourcePillar Security, pillar.security/platform and /platform/runtime-guardrailsread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerIntegrations & Tool Calling Discovery reaches agents across endpoints, APIs, gateways, SaaS and inference hooks, for agents built on LangGraph, CrewAI, Claude, GitHub Copilot and others. Straiker also acts in outside systems. Defend AI cuts off tool access or suspends sessions and alerts through Slack, email or webhook, and Discover AI can block or revoke risky MCP and tool access directly. Builder platforms covered include AutoGen, Vercel, AWS Bedrock AgentCore, Azure AI Foundry, Microsoft Copilot Studio, Google Vertex AI, Databricks and Snowflake, and the agents people use include OpenAI Codex, ChatGPT Enterprise, Cursor, Microsoft Copilot and Perplexity. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/platform and /products/defend-airead 2026-10-05 |
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Workflow Orchestration Ability to sequence, branch, retry, route, and combine deterministic workflow nodes with autonomous agent steps. |
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Pillar SecurityWorkflow Orchestration The product runs a fixed loop of discovery, red teaming and runtime guardrails, with governance on top and findings that tune the guardrails. Pillar does not orchestrate the customer's agents or offer a flow the customer builds. The loop covers coding agents, MCP servers and skill marketplaces. SourcePillar Security, pillar.security/platform and pillar.securityread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerWorkflow Orchestration Ascend AI runs a team of Straiker's own attack agents, which simulate real world threats across the customer's agent stack, from prompt injection and MCP tool misuse to agentic exploits, data leakage and exfiltration. Each Ascend finding becomes a policy recommendation for Defend AI, so testing feeds runtime protection. The kill switch can contain one agent without stopping the others or respond across many agents at once. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/products/ascend-ai, /platform and /solution/agentic-kill-switchread 2026-10-05 |
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Triggers & Channel Coverage How agents wake up and where they work: schedules, webhooks, message events, CRM events, inbox events, chat, email, voice, and collaboration tools. |
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Pillar SecurityTriggers & Channel Coverage Runtime guardrails act on every prompt and response, and on retrieved content and tool invocations, as they happen. Behavioral monitoring flags when an agent strays from its purpose, so work starts without anyone launching it. The guardrails judge intent rather than only matching patterns, blocking prompt injection, jailbreaks and tool manipulation as they happen. SourcePillar Security, pillar.security/platform/runtime-guardrailsread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerTriggers & Channel Coverage Ascend AI assessments start automatically on every model deployment, prompt update or configuration change through native CI/CD integration, and also run on schedules or on demand. Defend AI acts on every interaction at runtime, and Discover AI assesses each agent, tool connection and MCP server continuously. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/products/ascend-ai, /products/discover-ai and /platformread 2026-10-05 |
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| Knowledge & context | ||
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Knowledge Grounding & RAG Ability to ground agent behavior in company data through document ingestion, retrieval, external knowledge APIs, semantic search, or RAG layers. |
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Pillar SecurityKnowledge Grounding & RAG A full inventory covers the customer's agents and models along with MCP servers and tools, with agent permissions mapped to data sources, and RedGraph maps how tools, prompts and data combine. Together they chart the customer's AI estate, including shadow AI, and Pillar describes no retrieval structure its agents draw on. Runtime guardrails also trace PII and secrets from source to destination. SourcePillar Security, pillar.security/platformread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerKnowledge Grounding & RAG Discover AI maps agents to the models, tools, MCPs, skills, data, permissions and systems behind them, and STAR Labs research feeds evaluations. That is a map of the customer's estate plus Straiker's own research, and there is no knowledge store its agents retrieve from. STAR Labs is Straiker's AI and security research team studying how real agents behave, and Defend AI checks MCP connections against Straiker's MCP Threat Database. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/platform and /products/defend-airead 2026-10-05 |
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Memory & State Persistence Ability to persist context across a run, conversation, workflow, user, team, or longer-term memory layer. |
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Pillar SecurityMemory & State Persistence There is no memory for the customer's agents. The asset map and the interaction logs are records about the agents, not memory the agents use. Sourcepillar.security/platformread 2026-09-28 |
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StraikerMemory & State Persistence There is no memory for the customer's agents. The discovery map and the traces record the estate and its activity, not anything an agent remembers. Discover AI keeps every agent, tool connection and MCP server on record and assesses them continuously, and the kill switch keeps the activity and audit trail after an agent is stopped. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/products/discover-ai and /solution/agentic-kill-switch; straiker.ai/platformread 2026-10-05 |
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| Control & trust | ||
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Human Oversight & Guardrails Approval steps, consent checkpoints, escalation rules, structured guardrails, policy constraints, and pause/resume controls. |
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Pillar SecurityHuman Oversight & Guardrails Runtime guardrails block malicious instructions and interactions that break data handling rules, and they redact sensitive content. Approved model lists and MCP allowlists set further limits. The customer sets these limits, and Pillar describes no step that asks a person to approve before an agent action goes through. Blocking follows configurable policies for data handling and data sovereignty. SourcePillar Security, pillar.security/platform/runtime-guardrails and /platformread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerHuman Oversight & Guardrails Defend AI runs in Detect or Protect mode with policies the customer writes, blocks prompt injection and tool manipulation, cuts off tool access and suspends sessions. The customer sets these limits, and no step has a person approve or get asked before an agent action goes through. With the kill switch, the security team can stop an agent mid task while it investigates, isolate it or take it offline, and Straiker says it stops agents in seconds. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/platform and /solution/agentic-kill-switchread 2026-10-05 |
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Security, Identity & Governance RBAC, SSO, auditability, encryption, least-privilege tool access, compliance posture, and data handling policy. |
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Pillar SecuritySecurity, Identity & Governance Pillar reports a SOC 2 Type II audit, and its trust center is at trust.pillar.security. Pillar names no SSO, role model or audit surface for people using the Pillar console. SourcePillar Security, pillar.securityread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerSecurity, Identity & Governance Straiker displays ISO/IEC 27001 and SOC 2 badges and is a member of the Cloud Security Alliance. It names no SSO, roles or audit log for its own console, and its security features protect the customer's agents, not access to Straiker itself. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai and /platformread 2026-10-05 |
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Observability & Auditability Traces, logs, execution histories, metrics, audit events, and debugging detail for production agent behavior. |
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Pillar SecurityObservability & Auditability Runtime guardrails log every prompt, response and tool call with metadata and timestamps for the customer's agents, along with results, and stream telemetry to SIEM, giving a record of every tool call. Audit logs, compliance reports and policy lifecycle management sit under governance. SourcePillar Security, pillar.security/platform/runtime-guardrails and /platformread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerObservability & Auditability Defend AI traces every interaction across the user, the model, the tool chain and calls between agents, and keeps full agentic traces as evidence ready for audit, recording each tool call the customer's agents make. Alerts go out instantly over Slack, email or webhook, and the kill switch preserves the activity and audit trail when an agent is stopped. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/products/defend-ai and /solution/agentic-kill-switchread 2026-10-05 |
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Deployment & Data Residency Deployment modes and options, including SaaS, dedicated cloud, VPC, on-prem, hybrid, local runtime, and self-hosting. |
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Pillar SecurityDeployment & Data Residency Customers can deploy Pillar in their own VPC with their own data and models, so it can run in the customer's own environment. Pillar is offered as cloud, self hosted or hybrid. SourcePillar Security, pillar.security and /platformread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerDeployment & Data Residency Straiker runs as SaaS or on premises for regulated and sovereign environments, so the platform can sit in a customer environment. The AWS Marketplace listing is a way to buy, not a deployment option. Defend AI installs through a single hook based integration, a one line install by API, SDK or webhook, and Straiker says it deploys in minutes. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/platform and /products/defend-airead 2026-10-05 |
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| Solution readiness | ||
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Prebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Ready-made workflows, packaged employees, templates, blueprints, industry solutions, and role-specific agents that reduce time-to-value. |
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Pillar SecurityPrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Prebuilt guardrails ship, along with compliance reports for GDPR and CCPA and the published SAIL framework, now in version 2.0, but Pillar does not name them as a catalog and offers no prebuilt agents. The platform has five modules. They are discovery and posture, red teaming, runtime guardrails, governance and compliance, and an agentic endpoint module. SourcePillar Security, pillar.security/platformread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerPrebuilt Agents, Templates & Packs Prebuilt evaluations ship with the platform (new STAR Labs research becomes a production evaluation as it lands), along with compliance mappings to OWASP, MITRE ATLAS, NIST and the EU AI Act. The evaluation catalog and the attack agents are not named. Packaged solutions cover coding agents, custom built agents, productivity agents, the agentic kill switch, MCP and agent skills security, AI compliance and governance, and EU AI Act readiness for agents. Ascend AI also hands over remediation playbooks matched to the customer's risk tolerance. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/platform and /products/ascend-ai; straiker.ai/products/ascend-airead 2026-10-05 |
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| Platform extensibility | ||
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Model Flexibility & Routing Ability to work across multiple foundation models, route tasks to different models, or let buyers bring their own providers and keys. |
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Pillar SecurityModel Flexibility & Routing Pillar enforces approved model lists but offers no model choice or routing of its own. Its guardrails mask PII, PHI, secrets and credentials before they reach the models. SourcePillar Security, pillar.security/platform and /platform/runtime-guardrailsread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerModel Flexibility & Routing The detection models are Straiker's own, and it offers no model choice or routing for the customer. Defend AI reports 98.1% detection accuracy at under 300 ms of latency and 6 to 21 times fewer false positives than frontier models used as judges, and it inspects text, code, images, audio and file uploads. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/products/defend-airead 2026-10-05 |
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APIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Composability layer: stable APIs, SDKs, MCP tool consumption/serving, custom tools, and integration into internal systems. |
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Pillar SecurityAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility No public API, SDK or MCP server is published for building on Pillar. MCP allowlists are something the product enforces, not a way to build on it. AI gateways can call the runtime guardrails through an API, but Pillar publishes no reference for it. SourcePillar Security, pillar.security/platform and /platform/runtime-guardrailsread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerAPIs, SDKs & MCP Extensibility Customers integrate through an API, SDK, webhook or AI sensor, though no API reference or SDK documentation is public, since the developer docs at docs.straiker.ai ask for an access code. Ascend AI also hooks into CI/CD pipelines to catch issues during builds and guide developers to fix them early. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/products/defend-ai, /products/ascend-ai and docs.straiker.airead 2026-10-05 |
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Testing, Debugging & Optimization Testing, debugging, scoring, retries, fallbacks, quality gates, and optimization loops for improving agent workflows before and after deployment. |
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Pillar SecurityTesting, Debugging & Optimization Adversarial attacks over many turns target the customer's AI agents and workflows, including black box attacks on production systems, with full attack transcripts and reproduction steps, and assessments run continuously. RedGraph maps the surfaces that can be exploited in the customer's environment. This is red teaming of the agents the customer has deployed. RedGraph builds attack graphs specific to the environment, showing lateral movement and tool chaining paths that other security tools miss. SourcePillar Security, pillar.security/platformread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerTesting, Debugging & Optimization Ascend AI continuously red teams the customer's agents across tools, MCP servers and workflows in development, staging and production, reporting real impact (code execution, exfiltration, tool abuse) mapped to OWASP, to MITRE ATLAS, to NIST and to the EU AI Act. Assessments run continuously, on a schedule or on demand, and also report unauthorized actions. Each finding becomes a suggested Defend AI policy. Straiker claims the highest attack success rate in the industry, and the mapped results serve as evidence for compliance reviews. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/products/ascend-ai and /platformread 2026-10-05 |
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| Specialist automation | ||
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Browser & Computer Use Browser, desktop, or remote/local computer control for workflows that cannot be handled through stable APIs alone. |
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Pillar SecurityBrowser & Computer Use Pillar describes no browser or computer use by its own agents. It secures coding agents against prompt injection, data exfiltration, unauthorized actions, excessive permissions and malicious code execution. SourcePillar Security, pillar.securityread 2026-10-05 |
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StraikerBrowser & Computer Use The platform works through hooks, APIs, SDKs and sensors, and its own agents use no browser or computer. It does watch coding agents such as Cursor, Claude Code and GitHub Copilot for destructive commands, file access violations and suspicious outbound access. SourceStraiker, straiker.ai/platform and /products/defend-ai; straiker.ai/products/defend-airead 2026-10-05 |
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Pricing snapshot
Sourced from the Index pricing dataset · open each vendor's profile for full detail.
| Pricing | P Pillar Security |
S Straiker |
|---|---|---|
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Entry price Lowest public entry point |
Contact sales; no prices published. Demo on request. | AWS Marketplace: 12-month contract at $100,000 per year for platform access (about $8,333 a month), billed on committed units for the agent footprint; scoped quotes from the vendor. |
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Pricing confidence How public the numbers are |
Contact only | Public, partial |
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Billing Primary billing axis |
Inference, not stated by the vendor: scope of AI assets, agents and applications secured. | Committed units representing the agent footprint, annual contract. |
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Variable cost Workload / overage exposure |
Medium variable cost | Medium variable cost |
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Free tier / trial Try before you buy |
No free tier
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No free tier
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Buying motion Self-serve vs sales call |
Sales call | Mixed |
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Pricing verified When this pricing was last checked |
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