Prisma AIRS vs WitnessAI

Prisma AIRS is Palo Alto Networks' platform for securing AI applications, agents, models and data. Palo Alto Networks launched it on April 28, 2025, the same day it announced its intent to acquire Protect AI, a Seattle AI security company, and completed that acquisition on July 22, 2025. Prisma AIRS 2.0, released October 28, 2025, "completes the native integration" of Protect AI, and Protect AI's chief executive, Ian Swanson, joined as VP, Product, Prisma AIRS. The protectai.com site now redirects to the Prisma AIRS page, and the README of Protect AI's open-source LLM Guard library says the project has been archived. Palo Alto Networks was incorporated in 2005 and is based in Santa Clara; this profile lists the company's founding year and headquarters, as the directory does for other big-company products. Palo Alto's fiscal 2026 annual report lists six parts: AI Gateway, Agent Security, AI Red Teaming, AI Runtime Security, AI Model Security (labeled AI Supply Chain Security on the current product page) and AI Posture Management. AI Runtime Security comes in two forms. API Intercept is called from application code through a REST API to scan prompts and model responses. Network Intercept inspects cloud network traffic inline and is managed from Strata Cloud Manager or Panorama. The platform supports AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, Kubernetes, private clouds and on-premises infrastructure. AI Red Teaming tests agentic and non-agentic systems with a library of more than 500 attack vectors across 50+ techniques and produces a risk score. AI Model Security scans models for tampering, malicious code, data poisoning, architectural backdoors and unsafe serialization formats. **Agent security** The product page now adds Agent Identity Security and Agentic Endpoint Security. Palo Alto completed its acquisition of Koi, which adds agentic endpoint security, in April 2026. On May 29, 2026 it completed its acquisition of Portkey, whose gateway becomes the core AI Gateway for Prisma AIRS: it routes, monitors and secures traffic between agents and models. **Frameworks** Palo Alto maps AI Red Teaming attacks to the OWASP Top 10 for LLMs, MITRE ATLAS and what it calls the NIST Risk Management Framework. We found no documented support for the EU AI Act or ISO 42001. **Who it's for** Enterprises, especially existing Palo Alto Networks customers on Strata Cloud Manager, that want model scanning, red teaming and runtime protection funded from the same credit pool as their software firewalls.

WitnessAI is an AI security and governance platform for enterprise AI use by employees and by AI agents. It was founded in 2023 and incubated by Ballistic Ventures. CEO Rick Caccia, previously SVP of marketing at Palo Alto Networks, is the only co-founder the company names. It is based in Mountain View, California, and has raised about $85.5 million in two announced rounds: $27.5 million co-led by GV and Ballistic Ventures (May 2024) and $58 million in strategic funding led by Sound Ventures (January 2026), with Fin Capital, Qualcomm Ventures, Samsung Ventures and Forgepoint Capital Partners taking part. The platform has three modules. Observe finds the AI apps, agents and MCP servers in use, drawing on a catalog of thousands of AI applications, and classifies conversations by intent. Control sets policies by department, role, intent or workforce type, routes prompts to approved or cheaper models, limits agents to approved MCP servers and tools, redacts sensitive data in real time and keeps audit trails. Protect (Witness Protect, which WitnessAI calls "the enterprise AI firewall") screens prompts and responses for prompt injection, jailbreaks and harmful output and tokenizes PII, credentials and secrets. Witness Attack runs automated red teaming against models before deployment. WitnessAI says it sees AI activity across the network without browser extensions or endpoint clients, including native apps such as Windows 11 Copilot and Office 365, and it integrates with F5 BIG-IP SSL Orchestrator for encrypted AI traffic. Each customer gets a single-tenant instance with customer-controlled encryption. In January 2026 it launched WitnessAI Agentic Security, which covers coding agents such as Claude Code, Cursor and Codex and records the user, agent, tool and rule for every blocked tool call. In July 2026 it added AI FinOps features: spend estimates for unsanctioned AI apps and agents, metering of sanctioned token use, an ROI dashboard and cost-based model routing. **AI compliance coverage** The compliance page offers logging of every AI app and interaction, policy enforcement and masking of regulated data, but names no AI framework. WitnessAI's AWS Marketplace listing says its audit trails support compliance reporting for the EU AI Act, ISO/IEC 42001, the NIST AI RMF and PCI DSS 4.0.1. We found no control mappings for any of them. WitnessAI announced a SOC 2 Type II attestation in October 2025; it has no public trust center. **Who it's for** Large enterprises that want to see and govern how employees and agents use public and internal AI tools, and to add runtime protection to their own AI apps. WitnessAI says its customers include financial services firms, utilities, airlines, automakers, retailers and telecoms. InComm Payments is the only customer it names on its site.