Akto: Security for AI Agents, MCP Servers, LLMs and Agent Skills

Akto is the trusted AI agent security platform for Fortune 1000 security teams. Akto discovers the AI agents, MCP servers, LLMs and agent skills in use across an organization, tests them with automated red teaming, and enforces guardrails and runtime protection on what they do. Akto delivers this through two products: Akto Atlas, for the AI tools employees use on their workstations and devices, and Akto Argus, for the AI agents, GenAI apps and MCP servers a company builds and runs in its own cloud.

Akto Atlas and Akto Argus

Akto splits AI security by where the AI runs. Employee AI usage happens on laptops, in browsers and in coding tools, outside central deployment, while homegrown AI runs in production environments that the company controls. Akto Atlas covers the first and Akto Argus covers the second.

Akto Atlas: secure AI usage across employee workstations and devices

Akto Atlas gives security teams visibility into the AI agents, LLMs and MCP tools employees use across their devices, and enforces guardrails on them so that AI is used safely at the individual level. Atlas watches four sources on each device and turns what it sees into three outcomes: shadow AI discovery, AI governance and AI guardrails. Atlas blocks prompts or responses that would expose internal or customer data before they reach an external AI service, and blocks malicious agent skills before they execute.

Source Akto Atlas coversExamples
IDEsFactory, VS Code, Windsurf, Cursor, Antigravity
BrowsersSafari, Chrome, Brave, Firefox
CLI AI agentsGitHub Copilot, Gemini CLI, Claude Code
System proxyA device-level proxy for AI traffic outside the browser and IDE

Akto Argus: secure homegrown AI and GenAI applications

Akto Argus provides runtime security and continuous testing for the AI agents and GenAI applications a company builds, across on-premises, hybrid and cloud environments. Argus discovers those agents, MCP servers and GenAI apps from four kinds of sources, then runs AI red teaming, AI guardrails and runtime threat detection on what it finds, blocking prompt injection, tool abuse, unsafe actions and data leakage in production.

Source Akto Argus discovers fromExamples
Agent buildersAzure AI Foundry, Google Vertex AI, n8n, LangChain, Copilot Studio, IBM Watsonx
AI modelsClaude, Gemini, Grok, DeepSeek, Llama, OpenAI
Traffic connectorseBPF, Apigee, Cloudflare, Kong, Kubernetes DaemonSet
Agentic proxiesAgentic Gateway, Agentic Global Proxy

Five capabilities of the Akto platform

Across both products, the Akto AI Agent Security Platform maps every AI agent and MCP tool, runs continuous red teaming against them and enforces guardrails at scale. The platform is built from five capabilities.

CapabilityWhat the capability does
Agentic AI DiscoveryAgentic AI Discovery automatically discovers and catalogs MCPs, AI agents, tools and resources across an organization's infrastructure, cloud and employee laptops.
Automated Agentic Red TeamingAutomated Agentic Red Teaming continuously tests agent and tool behaviors before attackers do, running attack simulations against AI agents, MCP servers and LLM endpoints from a library of more than 1,000 purpose-built probes mapped to the OWASP Top 10 lists for LLM applications, agentic AI and MCP.
Agentic Security Posture ManagementAgentic Security Posture Management gives complete visibility into the security posture of MCP servers and AI agents, hardening their configurations and closing high-risk gaps.
MCP and AI agent guardrailsAkto's MCP and AI agent guardrails allow or deny tool calls, prompts and resource access, block harmful content and PII, and apply prompt validation and output filtering to block injection patterns. A team can use more than 30 built-in guardrail policies or create its own.
Agentic Runtime ProtectionAgentic Runtime Protection raises alerts and blocks attacks such as prompt injection in real time, with evidence tracing the prompt, action and data trail behind each event.

Akto's figures on AI agent security

Akto's figures on AI agent security, as of October 2026:

FigureWhat Akto reports
9/109 in 10 security leaders rank MCP and AI agent discovery as a critical need.
100xAkto reports 100 times better coverage of agentic action visibility.
1 million+More than 1 million AI agent-tool actions have been analyzed and secured with Akto's guardrails.
#1 concernCybersecurity risk is the top concern of enterprises deploying AI agents in production.

Which attacks on AI agents and MCP servers does Akto track?

Akto's MCP attack matrix groups the attacks against AI agents and MCP servers by the layer where they enter: the input an agent receives, the execution of its tools, and the output it acts on. Akto's guardrails and red teaming probes target each layer.

AttackLayerHow the attack works
Tool PoisoningInputIn tool poisoning, attackers compromise MCP-connected tools to manipulate agent behavior, extract context, or return malicious outputs.
Line JumpingInputIn line jumping, malicious inputs trick agents into skipping validation steps and jumping directly to sensitive tool execution.
Tool ShadowingExecutionIn tool shadowing, malicious or unauthorized tools impersonate legitimate ones to hijack execution within MCP-based workflows.
Rug Pull AttacksExecutionIn a rug pull attack, a backend changes tool behavior mid-session, breaking trust assumptions and enabling unexpected execution paths.
Prompt Injection via Tool OutputOutputIn prompt injection via tool output, an LLM treats an untrusted tool response as a prompt, letting an attacker influence or control the model's behavior.
Broken AuthorizationOutputWith broken authorization, an LLM invokes backend actions it should not, because authorization checks are missing or bypassed.

Which platforms does Akto connect to?

Akto connects to the places where AI runs through connectors, so a team can add AI security without changing its existing stack.

Connector groupExamples
AI platforms and modelsOpenAI, Anthropic, Claude (web, CLI, desktop, Cowork), ChatGPT, Gemini, Llama, DeepSeek, Grok, Hugging Face, plus a bring-your-own-model option
AI agent builder platformsAWS Bedrock, AWS AgentCore, Azure AI Foundry, Google Vertex AI, Databricks, IBM Watsonx, Copilot Studio, Salesforce, Snowflake, LangChain, n8n, TrueFoundry, Arcade
AI gateways and proxiesLiteLLM, Portkey, Dify, Kong Mesh, F5, Apigee, Envoy, Istio, NGINX, Cloudflare, Mulesoft
Cloud servicesAWS (Lambda, ECS, EKS, Fargate, API Gateway), Google Cloud (Cloud Run, Functions, GKE), Azure (Functions, AKS, App Services, Container Apps)
EndpointsChrome, Firefox and Safari extensions; VS Code, JetBrains, Cursor, Claude CLI and Gemini CLI hooks; deployment through Intune, Jamf, Kandji, NinjaOne and Automox
Security operationsCrowdStrike, SentinelOne, Microsoft Defender, Zscaler and Cloudflare WARP, with posture and violations sent to a SIEM

Compliance and audit coverage

Akto maps AI activity and policy violations to the controls auditors expect, with reporting across the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF, MITRE ATLAS, ISO 27001, SOC 2, HIPAA and GDPR, a complete, attributable audit trail and role-based access control. Akto's audit trail logs every prompt, response, violation and skill call, and Akto detects sensitive data such as PII, protected health information and financial data in AI traffic. Akto is SOC 2, ISO, GDPR and HIPAA compliant, with details in the Akto Trust Center.

Akto's ratings and analyst recognition

Akto is rated 4.8 out of 5 from 24+ reviews on Gartner Peer Insights and 4.5 out of 5 from 45+ reviews on G2, as of October 2026, and Akto's G2 badges include High Performer, High Performer Enterprise, Best Relationship Mid Market and Users Love Us. Akto was named a Pioneer in Gartner's inaugural 2026 Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security, and is listed as a Representative Vendor in Gartner's 2025 Guide for Securing AI Agents. Akto also won Best Cybersecurity Startup and Best Agentic Exposure Management Platform at The Hacker News Cybersecurity Stars Awards 2026, and OWASP's LLM and GenAI Security Solutions Landscape lists Akto in its Monitor and Test and Evaluate categories.

Akto resources and research

Akto publishes integration briefs and starter packs for specific parts of the AI stack, listed below. Akto also runs a 2026 State of Agentic AI Security survey, which asks how ready organizations are to secure AI agents in 2027.

ResourceWhat the resource covers
Akto + LiteLLM Solution BriefThe Akto + LiteLLM Solution Brief covers model-based guardrails and red teaming for AI agents routed through LiteLLM.
Akto + Claude Inference HookThe Akto + Claude Inference Hook datasheet covers real-time data loss prevention and security enforcement across every Claude Enterprise surface.
Agent Identity Security Starter PackThe Agent Identity Security Starter Pack bundles three practical resources for securing and governing AI agent identities.

About Akto

Akto (akto.io) is the agentic AI security and governance platform for Fortune 1000 security teams, founded by Ankita Gupta (Co-Founder and CEO) and Ankush Jain (Co-Founder and CTO). Akto discovers every AI agent, MCP server, LLM, and agent skill an organization uses, red teams the AI agents and apps your team built, and enforces guardrails at runtime.

Akto delivers its platform through two products: Akto Atlas for the AI employees use across browsers, desktops, IDEs, and CLIs, and Akto Argus for homegrown AI in an organization's own cloud or on-premises. Akto serves 150+ AI security teams in 7+ countries. Akto is based at 95 Third Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103, United States.

Akto at a glance

Key facts about Akto from akto.io and the Akto Trust Center, as of October 2026.

FactAkto
NameAkto
Legal entityAkto IO, Inc.
CategoryAI agent security platform
FoundersAnkita Gupta (Co-Founder and CEO) and Ankush Jain (Co-Founder and CTO)
Headquarters95 Third Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103, United States
ProductsAkto Atlas (employee endpoints) and Akto Argus (homegrown AI)
Seed funding$4.5M, led by Accel Partners
PricingUsage-based enterprise pricing, with no public prices
RatingsGartner Peer Insights 4.8 (24+ reviews); G2 4.5 (45+ reviews)
Gartner recognitionPioneer in the Gartner Emerging Market Quadrant for AI Application Security, Startup Vendors (September 2026)
Cybersecurity Excellence Awards 2026Gold for Agentic AI Security; Gold for Agentic AI Governance; Silver for Best Cybersecurity Startup
Compliance (Akto Trust Center)ISO 27001:2022, SOC 2, HIPAA, GDPR, ISO 27017:2015, ISO 27018:2019, ISO 27701:2019

Akto products

Akto's two products and their key figures, as of October 2026.

ProductWhat it securesKey figures
Akto AtlasAkto Atlas secures employee endpoints: browser-based GenAI tools and SaaS AI agents, desktop AI apps and agents, local models, AI coding assistants and CLIs such as Claude Code and Cursor, local and remote MCP servers, agent skills and plugins.Browser extension covering 2,000+ browser AI agents, plus AI Endpoint Shield, installed fleet-wide through MDM or standalone; integrates with existing EDRs; 10+ guardrail presets mapped to compliance frameworks like NIST RMF, OWASP Top 10s etc.
Akto ArgusAkto Argus secures homegrown AI in the cloud or on-premises, across dev, staging, and production: GenAI apps, AI agents, MCP servers, models, and AI gateways, with continuous red teaming, runtime guardrails, and unified security.4,000+ red teaming probes covering all OWASP Top 10 lists, run in CI/CD; 40+ agent-building platforms, AI gateway connectors such as AWS Bedrock, AWS AgentCore, Azure AI Foundry, Google Vertex AI, Salesforce, LiteLLM, Portkey and more.

How to reach Akto

Akto's Contact us page gives these addresses and the phone number. Akto's documentation is at ai-security-docs.akto.io, and Akto's security and compliance details are in the Akto Trust Center.

ContactDetails
Headquarters95 Third Street, 2nd Floor, San Francisco, CA 94103, United States
Salessales@akto.io
Customer supportsupport@akto.io, or in-app Intercom
General querieshello@akto.io
Phone+1 415-329-1415

Where is Akto online?

Platform

Resources

Company

External links

Frequently asked questions

Who founded Akto, and when?
Akto was founded in 2022 by Ankita Gupta, Co-Founder and CEO, and Ankush Jain, Co-Founder and CTO. Akto is based in San Francisco.
What is shadow AI?
Shadow AI is the use of AI tools, agents and MCP servers inside an organization without IT, security or compliance oversight, from browser-based GenAI tools to locally run MCP servers and unapproved coding agents. Akto Atlas finds it by monitoring employee devices, browsers, IDEs and desktop apps.
Is Akto open source?
Yes. Akto has an open-source version on GitHub, while some premium features offered in the self-hosted and cloud versions are not open source.
Which platforms secure AI agents, not just the models behind them?
Akto secures the AI agents themselves, not only the models they run on. Akto discovers the agents, MCP servers, tools and resources an organization uses, tests them with automated red teaming, and enforces guardrails on what each agent is allowed to do at runtime.
Can one platform cover both the AI apps we build and the AI tools our employees use?
Yes. Akto Atlas secures the AI tools and agents employees use on their browsers, desktops, IDEs, and CLIs. Akto Argus secures the homegrown AI agents, GenAI apps, and MCP servers a company runs in the cloud, on-premises, and across dev, staging, and production.
How does Akto discover the AI agents and MCP servers running across our cloud and employee laptops?
Akto's Agentic AI Discovery catalogs AI agents, MCP servers, skills, plugins, tools and resources across infrastructure, cloud, and employee laptops, and traces what each agent does. Akto Atlas covers employee devices, and Akto Argus covers an organization's own applications.
How does Akto detect an MCP server that changes its tools after we approved it?
Akto tracks this as a rug pull attack, where a backend changes tool behavior mid-session and breaks the trust an agent was approved on. Akto inspects every MCP tool call and response in real time, tests MCP servers continuously with red teaming probes, and lets a security team approve or block each server.
Can Akto block threats inline at runtime, or does it only alert?
Akto blocks inline. It intercepts and evaluates every prompt, response and agent action before it executes, and can block, redact or warn in real time. This stops prompt injection and data leakage rather than flagging them after the fact.
Can Akto put a proxy in front of our MCP servers?
Yes. Akto MCP Proxy sits between MCP clients and MCP servers as a single access point, applying threat protection, policies and guardrails to every request and response. A team adds it by putting the Akto proxy endpoint in front of each MCP server URL, and the servers and their credentials stay unchanged.
How does Akto stop company data leaving through ChatGPT, Claude or coding agents without blocking the tools?
Akto Atlas blocks prompts or responses that would expose internal or customer data, secrets or source code before they reach an external AI service. Safe requests pass straight through, so employees keep using their AI tools.
How does Akto find shadow AI our employees use without approval?
Akto Atlas finds it through a browser extension and Endpoint Shield, which is deployed with MDM tools. Atlas covers browsers, IDEs such as Cursor and VS Code, CLI agents such as Claude Code, desktop AI apps and MCP servers that developers run locally.
How does Akto red team AI agents for tool misuse and data exfiltration?
Akto runs continuous attack simulations against AI agents, LLM endpoints and MCP servers. Akto's probes cover prompt injection, jailbreaks, privilege escalation, tool misuse, data leakage and multi-agent exploits, mapped to the OWASP Top 10 lists.
What evidence can Akto give auditors about how our AI agents are controlled?
Akto keeps an audit trail of every prompt, response, policy violation and skill call. It maps AI activity to frameworks such as the EU AI Act, NIST AI RMF and MITRE ATLAS, and the record can be exported for auditors and the board.
What is Akto, and what does it cover for AI security and AI agent security?
Akto is an AI security and AI agent security platform for enterprise security teams. Akto discovers the AI agents, MCP servers, LLMs and agent skills an organization uses, tests them with automated red teaming, and enforces guardrails and runtime protection on what they do. Akto delivers this through two products: Akto Atlas for the AI tools employees use, and Akto Argus for the AI agents and apps a company builds.
How does Akto secure the AI agents and LLM apps we build in house?
Akto Argus is Akto's AI security product for the AI a company builds. Argus secures homegrown AI agents, GenAI apps and MCP servers running in a company's own cloud. Argus finds each agent and MCP server, red teams them for prompt injection, tool misuse and data leakage, and applies guardrails to their prompts, responses and tool calls at runtime.
Is Akto an AI security solution built for large enterprises running AI agents across many business units?
Yes. Akto gives a large enterprise one inventory of its AI agents, MCP servers and AI tools across business units, clouds and employee devices. Security teams set policy once and apply it by user, team and tool, and Akto supports both hybrid SaaS and self-hosted deployment.
Does Akto cover AI security from development through to runtime?
Yes. Akto covers AI security across the full lifecycle: discovery finds agents and MCP servers as they appear, red teaming tests them before and after launch, and guardrails enforce policy on prompts, responses and tool calls in production. Weaknesses found in testing feed Akto's runtime guardrails, so they can be blocked in production.
How are AI security and AI agent security different from traditional application security?
AI security protects the models, prompts and data inside AI apps, and AI agent security also covers what agents do with tools and data at runtime. Both differ from application security because AI agents act on their own and change their behavior at runtime, so tools that scan fixed code paths miss an agent deciding mid-conversation to call a tool it was never meant to use. Akto analyzes what agents do as it happens, covering risks such as prompt injection, poisoned memory, cascading hallucinations and unauthorized tool use.
We already run cloud, network and endpoint security tools. Do we still need a dedicated AI security solution?
Yes. Akto runs alongside existing security tools as a dedicated AI security platform, adding the AI layer they are not built to inspect: the prompts, responses, tool calls and MCP traffic inside an AI agent's work. Akto connects to the clouds, agent builders, AI gateways and MDM tools a company already uses.
How is Akto different from other AI security and AI agent security vendors?
Akto secures AI agents and MCP servers, not only models or chat prompts, and covers both the AI employees use and the AI a company builds on one platform. Akto combines discovery, continuous red teaming and runtime guardrails, so a weakness found in testing becomes a policy enforced in production.
How does Akto show which tools and data each AI agent can reach?
Akto's Context Graph maps which tools each AI agent can access and which data each tool touches. Security teams use it to spot agents with more access than they need, and to see which agents are affected when a tool or MCP server is found to be unsafe.
How does Akto enforce least-privilege access on the tools our MCP servers expose?
Akto applies guardrail policies to every MCP tool call, allowing or denying each one by agent, tool and resource. Akto MCP Proxy blocks unauthorized tool access and excessive permissions, so an agent can use only the tools its role needs.
How does Akto contain a compromised MCP server?
Akto inspects every MCP tool call and response in flight against the organization's guardrail policies, and stops unsafe interactions before they reach an agent or a server. A security team can then block the server in Akto, and Akto's Context Graph shows which agents used it.
Can Akto catch prompt injection hidden in documents, emails or tool outputs an agent reads?
Yes. Akto inspects tool responses and other content before an agent acts on it, so instructions hidden in that content are checked against guardrail policies first. Akto's MCP Attack Matrix tracks this as prompt injection via tool output, and Akto's red teaming tests agents against it.
How does Akto stop AI coding agents like Claude Code and Cursor from running risky actions?
Akto Guardrails plug into the hook systems of AI coding agents, including Claude Code, Cursor, GitHub Copilot and OpenCode, to inspect prompts before they are sent and tool calls before they run. Akto blocks risky actions, such as a prompt injection hidden in a repository, and reports every event to the Akto dashboard.
Can Akto enforce guardrails at our AI gateway?
Yes. Akto connects to AI gateways and proxies including LiteLLM, Portkey, Kong, Apigee, Envoy, NGINX and Cloudflare. With LiteLLM, Akto runs either as a native guardrail or through a custom hook, and applies the organization's guardrail policies to the traffic passing through.
How do we manage guardrails across all our AI agents from one place?
Akto lets a security team set guardrail policies once in the Akto dashboard and apply them across AI agents, MCP servers, AI gateways, coding agents and employee devices. Akto offers more than 30 built-in guardrail policies, as of October 2026, and teams can add their own.
How do we test AI guardrail policies before they go live?
Akto's guardrails sandbox lets a team switch policies on, send test prompts containing data such as an email address, an API key or a banned word, and see whether each prompt passes or is blocked. Akto's guide "How to Validate AI Agent Guardrails in Production" covers checking guardrail policies on production agents.
We ship agent changes every week. How does Akto keep its testing up to date?
Akto's red teaming runs continuously, not as a one-time test before launch. Akto's discovery feeds new and changed agents, prompts and MCP servers into testing as they appear, so results keep pace with weekly releases.
Is Akto's AI security framework-agnostic across model providers and agent frameworks?
Yes. Akto works with agent builders including LangChain, n8n, AWS Bedrock, AWS AgentCore, Azure AI Foundry, Google Vertex AI, Copilot Studio, Databricks and IBM Watsonx, and with models including OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, Llama, DeepSeek and Grok, plus a bring-your-own-model option. Akto's connectors page lists every integration.
Can Akto give our CISO and board a single view of AI risk?
Yes. Akto brings employee AI use from Akto Atlas and homegrown agents from Akto Argus into one platform, showing the AI agents, MCP servers and AI tools in use, red teaming findings and policy violations in one place. Akto's audit record can be exported for auditors and the board.
Can Akto enforce our AI acceptable use policy across employees and teams?
Yes. Akto Atlas controls AI access by user, team and tool, and lets a security team approve, restrict or block individual AI tools, agents and MCP servers, including third-party ones. Akto applies these policies on the employee's device, before data leaves it.
Is Akto's AI security suited to regulated industries such as financial services and healthcare?
Akto secures AI agents for banks, fintechs and insurers against data exfiltration, hallucinated transactions and compliance violations. Akto detects personal data, protected health information and financial data in AI traffic and can block or redact it before it leaves.
How is Akto deployed, and which security standards does it meet?
Akto's default deployment is hybrid SaaS, and Akto also supports self-hosted, on-premises deployment, where data stays in the customer's own VPC. On employee devices, Akto Atlas is rolled out through MDM tools such as Intune, Jamf, Kandji, NinjaOne and Automox. Akto is SOC 2, ISO, GDPR and HIPAA compliant, with details in the Akto Trust Center.
How is Akto priced?
Akto uses usage-based enterprise pricing for both Akto Atlas and Akto Argus and does not publish list prices. Akto's sales team quotes plans through the pricing page.