Protect AI is a cybersecurity company with a mission to secure artificial intelligence and machine learning systems. The company’s stated vision is to create a safer, AI-powered world. To achieve this, Protect AI aims to establish the industry standard for MLSecOps (Machine Learning Security Operations) by providing the necessary tools and fostering a community to help customers confidently develop and deploy enterprise AI applications.
Protect AI’s goal is to enable organizations to build, deploy, and manage safer AI by offering visibility into and management of their machine learning environments. The company provides a platform that helps identify and mitigate risks within the ML supply chain. By embedding security into the entire AI lifecycle, from development to deployment, Protect AI intends to shift the security paradigm from a reactive to a proactive stance. The company has garnered a reputation as a pioneer in the MLSecOps field and has received significant venture capital funding to scale its operations and product development.
Offerings, Capabilities, and Integrations
Protect AI offers a comprehensive platform for securing artificial intelligence and machine learning environments from end to end. The company’s suite of products provides visibility into the AI/ML attack surface, detects and remediates vulnerabilities, and helps manage security risks. This allows organizations to build and deploy AI-driven solutions with confidence. Protect AI’s approach focuses on integrating security into the entire AI lifecycle, from model development and testing to runtime and monitoring. This “Secure by Design” philosophy is a key competitive differentiator, moving beyond reactive security measures to a proactive stance. The company’s offerings are designed to be flexible and fit into any environment through modular architecture and easy integrations. Protect AI has established partnerships with major technology players like Hugging Face, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft, Databricks, and Leidos to enhance its capabilities and reach. These integrations allow for securing generative AI models in platforms like Amazon Bedrock and Databricks Mosaic AI Model Serving endpoints.
Products and Services
Protect AI’s platform is composed of several key products that address different aspects of AI security. The company’s flagship product is its AI security platform, which has expanded to include multiple offerings. An early open-source tool, NB Defense, was developed to secure Jupyter Notebooks.
- Guardian: This product acts as a secure model gateway, scanning both third-party and internally developed models for malicious code and other security risks before they are used in a customer’s environment. It integrates with platforms like Hugging Face to provide security alerts for foundational models.
- Recon: This offering provides automated red-teaming for generative AI applications to proactively identify vulnerabilities. It offers in-depth security analysis through no-code integration and model-agnostic scanning.
- Layer: This product focuses on runtime security for Large Language Model (LLM) applications by monitoring, detecting, and sanitizing inputs and outputs to prevent threats and ensure compliance.
- Radar: As a comprehensive AI security posture management solution, Radar provides end-to-end visibility across the entire machine learning supply chain, including models, data, and applications. It creates a Machine Learning Bill of Materials (MLBOM) for auditability and enforces security policies.
- huntr: This is the world’s first AI/ML bug bounty platform, which leverages a community of security researchers to find and fix vulnerabilities in open-source AI/ML software and foundational models.
Target Customers
Protect AI targets a broad range of customers, including large enterprises and organizations in both the private and public sectors. Its solutions are designed for companies that are developing, deploying, or utilizing AI and machine learning models and are concerned about the associated security risks. Key industries that benefit from Protect AI’s offerings include finance, healthcare, government, and technology. The company’s customers range from Fortune 500 companies to U.S. government agencies. These organizations use Protect AI’s platform to secure their AI systems, protect sensitive data, and ensure the integrity of their AI-powered applications. By providing end-to-end security, Protect AI helps these customers innovate and adopt AI technologies safely and responsibly. Recently, Palo Alto Networks completed its acquisition of Protect AI, integrating its technology into the Prisma AIRS platform to provide comprehensive AI security to a wide array of industries.
Cloud Integrations and Marketplaces
Protect AI offers several cloud integrations and maintains a presence on major cloud marketplaces to help organizations secure their AI and machine learning models and applications.
- Amazon Web Services (AWS): Protect AI integrates its Guardian and Recon products with Amazon Bedrock and Amazon SageMaker. This integration enables customers to secure their generative AI models and applications directly within their existing AWS environments. The solutions provide capabilities like deep model scanning to identify threats and vulnerabilities before deployment.
- Microsoft Azure: Protect AI is a member of the Microsoft Pegasus Program for startups, which facilitates the use of its AI security products on Microsoft’s infrastructure.
- Databricks: Protect AI’s Recon product integrates with Databricks Mosaic AI Model Serving endpoints. This allows enterprises to use Recon’s red-teaming capabilities to find vulnerabilities and improve the integrity of Large Language Model (LLM) applications.
Protect AI’s platform is available on the following cloud marketplaces:
- AWS Marketplace: Protect AI offers its “Platform for AI and ML Security” on the AWS Marketplace. This allows customers to procure and deploy Protect AI’s solutions and have the fees integrated into their AWS bill. The integration with Amazon Bedrock can be accessed through the AWS Marketplace listing.
- Microsoft Azure Marketplace: Protect AI is listed on the Microsoft Azure Marketplace, providing another avenue for customers to access its AI security solutions.
Protect AI does not have a listing on the Google Cloud Marketplace.
Key People
- CEO & Founder: Ian Swanson
- CTO & Founder: Badar Ahmed
- President & Founder: Daryan Dehghanpisheh
- Chief Information Security Officer (CISO): Diana Kelley.
- Chief Revenue Officer: Ralph Pisani
- VP, Product, Prisma AIRS (at Palo Alto Networks): Ian Swanson.
Key Facts
- Headquarters Location: Seattle, Washington, United States.
- Number of Employees: Approximately 133.
- Annual Revenue: $15M.
- Parent Company: Palo Alto Networks.
- Subsidiary Companies: SydeLabs, Laiyer AI, Huntr, Rebuff.
- Publicly Listed: No.
Analyst Recognition
Based on available information, Protect AI is not specifically mentioned in technology categories or reports by the analyst groups Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and Everest Group. Recent developments indicate that Protect AI was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in July 2025 to become a cornerstone of Palo Alto Networks’ Prisma® AIRS™ platform. While there is extensive analyst recognition for other companies in the AI security sector and for the acquiring company, Palo Alto Networks, there is no direct analyst recognition found for Protect AI as an independent entity from the specified analyst firms prior to its acquisition.
