Knostic vs Lasso Security

Knostic is an AI security company founded in 2023 by Gadi Evron (CEO) and Sounil Yu (CTO). It is based in Herndon, Virginia. It started out selling need-to-know access controls for enterprise AI assistants such as Microsoft 365 Copilot and Glean, which keep answers from exposing data a user shouldn't see. Its website now calls it "the control plane for agentic AI on the endpoint", and it sells two products for AI coding assistants and agents. Kirin runs alongside Cursor, Claude Code, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, Codex, JetBrains, Devin Desktop and Gemini CLI, and supports Claude Cowork through a plugin. It checks each tool call against policy before it runs and blocks it, downgrades it or sends it to a human. It also validates MCP connections, scans dependencies for hallucinated, vulnerable or malicious packages, and finds and redacts secrets before they reach the model. It audits agent instruction files such as CLAUDE.md and .cursorrules. Kirin installs as a lightweight user-space client that admins can roll out with MDM scripts, on macOS and Windows; Linux is in beta. Its Shadow AI Discovery reports unsanctioned AI use but doesn't block it. AgentMesh scans agent skills, MCP servers and VS Code extensions and labels each one dangerous, risky or clean. In June 2026 VirusTotal added AgentMesh analysis of VS Code extensions. Knostic also publishes an open-source scanner, OpenAnt. Knostic still has a page that pairs it with Microsoft Purview against Copilot oversharing, and its AWS Marketplace listing is still the Copilot Readiness product. Its homepage, product and pricing pages no longer describe that product. It raised a $3.3 million pre-seed round in April 2024 and an $11 million round led by Bright Pixel Capital in March 2025. In 2025 it also received a $5 million investment as an RSAC Innovation Sandbox finalist. In June 2025 Virginia Business put its total funding at $19 million and its headcount at about 30. In October 2025 Gartner named Knostic a Cool Vendor in AI Cybersecurity Governance, for its controls on AI oversharing. **AI compliance coverage** Knostic doesn't map its products to the EU AI Act, the NIST AI RMF or ISO 42001. Its trust center lists a SOC 2 Type 2 report and GDPR, its FAQ offers a compliance package with the SOC 2 report and pen test results, and its Enterprise plan includes compliance reporting. **Who it's for** Security teams at companies whose developers use AI coding agents, agent skills and MCP servers. It is not a governance, model inventory or model testing platform.

Lasso Security provides an AI Security Platform that delivers visibility, control, and protection across AI models, agents, and applications for enterprises. The platform inventories AI assets including agents, models, prompts, tools, and guardrails via discovery and AI-BOM features. It offers AI Security Posture Management for misconfigurations, supply chain risks, and alignment with NIST and OWASP frameworks. Automated red teaming uses a library of over 3,000 attacks covering OWASP Top 10 and agentic threats like context poisoning. Runtime enforcement provides zero-latency decisions with remediation guidance, while AI Detection & Response leverages MITRE and OWASP for threat detection with 98.6% accuracy and sub-50ms latency, including intent analysis for anomalies. Lasso targets enterprises adopting GenAI, particularly regulated sectors, enabling secure innovation through real-time risk reduction, governance, and compliance support. The platform maps to frameworks like NIST AI RMF, EU AI Act, and ISO/IEC 42001 via runtime policies and audit trails, integrating with tools like Cloudflare and Palo Alto Networks.