Vanta, the leading Trust Platform, today announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Pillar Security, a leading AI security platform that safeguards agents across their entire lifecycle. Pillar Security’s runtime protection and adversarial testing capabilities will connect the policies that define how AI should operate with guardrails that enforce what agents do, helping companies govern AI as fast as they adopt it.
As AI evolves into agents that take action, they can access sensitive data, use permissions in unexpected ways and take paths no one anticipated during their initial review. Vanta’s own research shows 65% of IT and business leaders say their use of agentic AI is outpacing their understanding of it, and fewer than half (48%) have a framework for granting or limiting AI autonomy.1
“Customers, regulators and auditors want proof that a company’s AI does what it says on the tin,” said Christina Cacioppo, CEO and co-founder, Vanta. “A policy document doesn’t get you there. Pillar Security lets companies test their agents and stop them when they go out of bounds, and Vanta turns all of that into evidence.”
Founded in 2023 by Ziv Karliner and Dor Sarig, Pillar Security gives companies one platform to discover, test, secure and govern AI agents.
Throughout 2027, Vanta will integrate Pillar Security’s capabilities into Vanta to deliver end-to-end protection for AI agents:
- AI Inventory (January 2027): Automatically maps AI applications, models, agents, skills and MCP servers across an enterprise, connecting each to its owner, approved use cases, data access, vendors, controls and risks.
- Red-teaming (spring 2027): Run adversarial testing tailored to a customer’s business context, mapping exploitable paths and identifying where protections need hardening so vulnerabilities can be addressed before attackers exploit them.
- Runtime monitoring and detection (January 2027): Detect suspicious activity and guardrail violations, and prioritize investigations with context from the Trust Graph.
- Runtime enforcement (summer 2027): Pillar Security runtime protection turns governance requirements into enforceable boundaries, blocking unauthorized actions in real time.
AI security point solutions can detect threats but often lack business context. GRC tools document policies but are disconnected from how agents behave. Vanta connects the two through its Trust Graph, so every intervention strengthens the governance program.
“Pillar makes AI security work at the speed AI operates: we test AI systems the way attackers will and stop them the moment they go out of bounds. As every company becomes an AI company, that’s what it takes to keep AI secure and under control,” said Ziv Karliner, CEO and co-founder of Pillar Security. “Vanta is the governance platform thousands of companies already rely on. Together, we’ll make AI security a built-in part of every company’s governance program, so they can adopt AI with confidence.”
“Active is too slow in the age of AI. Agents move through the enterprise at machine speed, and governance that only documents risk after the fact can’t keep up,” said Phil Harris, Research Director, Governance, Risk and Compliance Solutions, IDC. “CISOs need controls that sit in the path and act in real time. Moves like this one show the market shifting from AI governance on paper to governance at runtime.”
The deal builds on the AI governance product offering Vanta introduced in July 2026, whose early access program has become the company’s most requested to date, with a waitlist now six times oversubscribed. Vanta plans to bring Pillar Security capabilities into its platform in early 2027.
Vanta now serves three in four companies on the Forbes AI 50, and daily users of the Vanta Agent are up 253% over the last three quarters as customers hand more of their security and compliance work to an agent that acts on their behalf – the same shift driving demand for runtime guardrails. The company now serves more than 20,000 customers, up from 16,000 in Q1 2026. In April 2026, Vanta announced it surpassed $300M in ARR, growing 63% year over year and tripling ARR since 2024, fueled by its AI and Risk offerings. Pillar Security is Vanta’s third acquisition, following Riskey in July 2025 and Trustpage in January 2023.
About Vanta
Vanta is the leading Trust Platform, setting the standard for how businesses earn and prove trust as AI reshapes security and compliance. Over 20,000 companies like Snowflake, GitHub, Ramp, Cursor, Golden State Warriors, and Icelandair rely on Vanta to guide, automate, and improve the GRC work that trust is built on. For more information, visit www.vanta.com.
1 Vanta State of Trust Report 2025. Sapio Research survey of 3,500 IT and business leaders, July 2025.
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