The coolest AI cybersecurity companies in 2024 include Crowdstrike, Fortinet, Netskope, and Trend Micro.
As cybersecurity vendors have often pointed out over the past year and a half, artificial intelligence is far from new to cyber defense. AI and machine learning are, in fact, under the hood of almost every major cybersecurity feature, from threat detection to user authentication and access management to analytics. network traffic and many other key security features. In other words, AI for cybersecurity “has been around for a long time because it’s absolutely necessary,” said Brian Gagnon, CTO at Uprise Partners, an MSP based in Portland, Maine.
The arrival of generative AI therefore constitutes more of an evolution than a revolution in the field of cybersecurity. This is not to downplay the potentially massive impact: GenAI has gone viral in the cybersecurity industry, with countless vendors introducing new features powered by large language models following OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT end of 2022.
GenAI is making a particular splash among security operations tool providers, where the ability to replace manual processes with natural language queries promises to deliver a huge boost in productivity and efficiency. But many other categories, from email and collaboration security to cloud and code security, to protecting the use of GenAI itself, are also improved with this class of technology still new.
Part of CRN’s first AI 100 listhere are the 20 coolest AI cybersecurity companies of 2024.
Abnormal security
Evan Reiser
Co-founder, CEO
Abnormal Security offers AI-powered behavioral analytics to secure messaging and collaboration applications, enabling enhanced detection of abnormal activities. In the GenAI space, Abnormal’s CheckGPT tool leverages several large open source language models to determine the likelihood that an email message was created using GenAI.
Crowd strike
George Kurtz
Co-founder, Chairman and CEO
While CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform has long used AI for endpoint threat detection (and more recently for identity and cloud threats), the company moved to GenAI with the introduction by Charlotte AI. The technology aims to significantly increase the productivity and efficiency of security analysts.
Dark trace
Poppy Gustafsson
CEO
Darktrace was the first to come up with the idea that AI/ML could be used to improve the detection of cyberattacks. Alongside detection, the company has now expanded its self-learning AI technology to include attack prevention, response and remediation, spanning cloud, application, email, endpoint and network environments.
Deep instinct
Lane Bess
CEO
Deep Instinct is among the pioneers in deploying AI for cyber defense, with a focus on preventative security. The company’s deep learning algorithms aim to predict attacks like ransomware, zero-day threats, and other previously unknown attacks before they happen.
Fortinet
Ken Xie
Founder, President, Managing Director
While maintaining more than 40 AI-based offerings in total, Fortinet has shifted its focus to generative AI with the recent launch of FortiAI, its GenAI-based security assistant. The tool’s key capabilities include rapid analysis and interpretation of security incidents as well as generation of investigative queries.
Halcyon
Jon Miller
Co-founder, CEO
Halcyon’s anti-ransomware technology is powered by a proprietary AI/ML engine, allowing the platform to make precise decisions in near real-time to prevent attacks before they are executed, according to the startup. The capabilities analyze the behavior and context of the system as a whole rather than just examining individual files.
Lace
Jay Parikh
CEO
Lacework’s cloud security technology, Polygraph, makes extensive use of AI/ML for anomaly detection, with the goal of significantly reducing alerts and necessary system adjustments. In the GenAI space, the company recently launched Lacework AI Assist, which aims to increase the productivity of security teams.
Netscope
Sanjay Beri
CEO
Netskope has made AI/ML capabilities available on its Secure Access Services edge platform, including SkopeAI, providing deep contextual awareness for better data loss prevention as well as detection of security-generated threats. AI. Other key applications of the technology include protection against misuse of GenAI applications such as ChatGPT.
Orca Safety
Gil Geron
Co-founder, CEO
Key AI-powered features of Orca’s cloud security platform include rapid generation of remediation instructions using GenAI. The company also launched an AI-powered cloud asset search that uses large language model technologies to enable question-and-answer functionality around an organization’s assets in the cloud.
Palo Alto Networks
Nikesh Arora
President and CEO
Palo Alto Networks’ long-standing focus on leveraging AI/ML in its products has enabled advancements such as Cortex XSIAM (extended security intelligence and automation management), the “standalone” security operations platform. driven by AI. Other key AI-powered product launches include the recent release of Darwin for Prisma Cloud.
SentinelOne
Tomer Weingarten
Co-founder, CEO
SentinelOne has focused on providing “standalone” endpoint security leveraging AI/ML since the early days of its Singularity platform. The vendor’s GenAI technology, Purple AI, aims to provide improved productivity for threat hunters and other security analysts, and is integrated into the recent Unity release of Singularity.
SlashNext
Patrick Harr
Co-founder, CEO
SlashNext has stood out for its use of AI/ML to protect against phishing and social engineering across platforms such as email, mobile SMS, and collaboration apps. The company also uses its own internal language model to block email attacks created using ChatGPT and other GenAI applications.
Splunk
Gary Steele
President and CEO
With the launch of Splunk AI last year, the cybersecurity and observability vendor introduced tools, including Splunk AI Assistant, to provide a natural language interface for the enterprise system. The tool offers a chat experience and can be used to explain or create Splunk Processing Language queries.
Tanium
Dan Streetman
CEO
Tanium recently unveiled its Autonomous Endpoint Management platform, which uses GenAI to improve productivity and further automate decision-making for IT and security teams, including prioritizing risks using data on the importance of different assets. Other features automate the generation of workflows around endpoint management.
Defensible
Amit Yoran
CEO
Tenable’s GenAI-based capabilities include ExposureAI, which provides search capabilities to help users analyze assets and potential exposures with natural language queries, as well as mitigation guidance. The offering also uses generative AI to prioritize response actions based on the highest risk exposures.
Micro Trend
Eva Chen
Co-founder, CEO
Strengthening its AI-powered Vision One platform for threat detection, response and prevention, Trend Micro recently launched its GenAI tool for security analysts, Trend Companion. The tool aims to automate more of the threat investigation and risk assessments, the company said.
Vectra AI
Hitesh Sheth
President and CEO
Vectra specializes in delivering AI-powered XDR (extended detection and response) that correlates threats across environments and devices. The company’s recently launched detection and response platform uses patented AI-based technology, called Attack Signal Intelligence, with the aim of equipping security operations teams with better threat prioritization.
Veracode
Brian Roche
CEO
With its Veracode Fix tool, application security vendor Veracode uses GenAI to provide remediation suggestions to developers, helping to fix security vulnerabilities in open source code and dependencies. The company recently added this feature to its Veracode Scan for VS Code offering.
Ace
Assaf Rappaport
Co-founder, CEO
Wiz recently launched native AI security capabilities with its AI-SPM (AI security posture management) offering, which aims to protect the use of AI tools during the software development process. The cloud security provider has since expanded its AI-SPM support to include the OpenAI API platform.
Zscaler
Jay Chaudhry
Founder, President, Managing Director
With its new secure access service offering, Zscaler Zero Trust SASE, the company offers adaptive AI technology to enable continuous risk assessment, Zscaler said. At the same time, the company’s data loss prevention product has been updated to prevent potential data leaks to GenAI applications.
