The coolest AI cybersecurity companies in 2024 include Crowdstrike, Fortinet, Netskope and Trend Micro.
As cybersecurity vendors have noted over the past year and a half, synthetic intelligence is far from new to cyber defense. In fact, AI and device learning are under the hood of almost every major cybersecurity capability, from risk detection to user authentication and access management, network traffic investigation, and many other key security features. In other words, AI for cybersecurity “has been around for a long time because it is surely necessary,” said Brian Gagnon, chief technology officer at Uprise Partners, an MSP founded in Portland, Maine.
The arrival of generative AI, then, is more evolution than revolution in the cybersecurity sphere. That’s not to downplay the potentially massive impact: GenAI has basically gone viral in the cybersecurity industry, with countless vendors introducing new capabilities powered by large language models in the wake of OpenAI’s debut of ChatGPT in late 2022.
GenAI is causing quite a stir among security operations tool vendors, where the ability to update manual processes with natural language queries promises to deliver a huge increase in productivity and efficiency. But many other categories, from email security and collaboration to cloud and code security to protecting the use of GenAI itself, are also moving forward with this still new generation elegance.
As part of CRN’s inaugural AI 100 list, here are the 20 coolest AI cybersecurity companies of 2024.
Abnormal Security
Evan Reiser
Co-founder, CEO
Abnormal Security offers AI-based behavioral analytics for secure messaging and collaboration applications, enabling enhanced detection of anomalous activity. In the GenAI space, Abnormal’s CheckGPT tool leverages several giant open source language models to determine the likelihood that an email message was created using GenAI.
CrowdStrike
George Kurtz
Co-Founder, President and CEO
While CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform has long used AI for endpoint risk detection (and more recently for identity and cloud risks), the company moved to GenAI with the arrival of Charlotte AI. The generation is particularly aimed at increasing the productivity and power of security analysts.
Dark trail
Poppy Gustafsson
CEO
Darktrace was early to the idea that AI/ML could be used for improving detection of cyberattacks. Along with detection, the company has now expanded its self-learning AI technology to include attack prevention, response and remediation—spanning cloud, applications, email, endpoint and network environments.
Deep Instinct
bess lane
executive director
Deep Instinct is among the pioneers in implementing AI for cyber defense, with a focus on preventative security. The company’s deep learning algorithms aim to wait for attacks such as ransomware, zero-day threats, and other attacks unknown in the past before they occur.
Fortinet
Ken Xie
Founder, Chairman, CEO
While it offers more than 40 AI-based services in total, Fortinet has shifted its focus toward generative AI with the recent launch of FortiAI, its GenAI-based security assistant. Key features of the tool include the immediate investigation and interpretation of security incidents, as well as the generation of investigative queries.
Halcyon
jon miller
Co-Founder, CEO
Halcyon’s anti-ransomware technology is powered by a proprietary AI/ML engine, enabling the platform to make accurate decisions nearly in real time to prevent attacks ahead of execution, according to the startup. The capabilities analyze the system’s behavior and context overall rather than just looking at individual files.
Cord
Jay Parikh
executive director
Lacework’s cloud security technology, Polygraph, makes extensive use of AI/ML for anomaly detection, with the goal of specifically alerting and adjusting formulas. In the GenAI space, the company recently introduced Lacework AI Assist, which aims to increase the productivity of security teams.
netscope
Sanjay Beri
executive director
Netskope has built AI/ML capabilities into its industry-leading secure access services platform, adding SkopeAI, which delivers deep contextual awareness for greater knowledge loss prevention as well as detection of AI-generated threats. Other key programs of the generation come with coverage that opposes the misuse of GenAI programs like ChatGPT.
Orca Security
Gil Geron
Co-founder, CEO
The key AI-powered features of Orca’s cloud security platform come with the immediate generation of GenAI remediation commands. The company also announced an AI-powered cloud asset search that uses giant language design technologies to enable the ability to ask and answer about a company’s resources in the cloud.
Palo Alto Networks
Nikesh Arora
Chairman, CEO
Palo Alto Networks’ long experience leveraging AI/ML in its products has enabled advancements such as Cortex XSIAM (Extended Security Intelligence and Automation Management), the company’s AI-powered “autonomous” security operations platform. Other key AI-powered product launches come with Darwin’s recent release for Prisma Cloud.
SentinelOne
Tomer Weingarten
Co-Founder, CEO
SentinelOne has focused on providing “autonomous” endpoint security by leveraging AI/ML since the early days of its Singularity platform. The vendor’s GenAI technology, Purple AI, aims to provide enhanced productivity to threat hunters and other security analysts, and is integrated into the recent Unity release of Singularity.
Forward slashNext
Patrick Harr
Co-founder, CEO
SlashNext has been notable for its use of AI/ML to protect against phishing and social engineering on platforms such as email, mobile SMS, and collaboration apps. The company also uses its own internal language style to block email attacks created by ChatGPT and other GenAI applications.
Splunk
Gary Steele
President, CEO
With last year’s debut of Splunk AI, the cybersecurity and observability vendor introduced tools including Splunk AI Assistant to provide a natural language interface for the company’s system. The tool provides a chat experience and can be used to explain or author Splunk Processing Language queries.
tannium
Dan Streetman
CEO
Tanium recently introduced its autonomous endpoint management platform, which uses GenAI to increase productivity and further automate decision-making for IT and security teams, adding risk prioritization using insights into the importance of other assets. Other features automate the generation of workflows around endpoint management.
Defensible
Amit Yoran
CEO
Tenable’s GenAI-based capabilities come with ExposureAI, which provides search capabilities for users to analyze potential assets and exposures with natural language queries, as well as mitigation guidance. The offering also uses generative AI to prioritize reaction moves based on maximum risk exposures.
Microtrend
Eva Chen
Co-founder, CEO
Bolstering its AI-driven Vision One platform for threat detection, response and prevention, Trend Micro recently debuted its GenAI tool for security analysts, Trend Companion. The tool aims to automate a greater portion of threat investigations and risk assessments, the company said.
Vectra AI
Hitesh Sheth
president, CEO
Vectra specializes in offering AI-powered XDR (Extended Detection and Reaction) that correlates risks across environments and devices. The company’s newly introduced detection and reaction platform uses proprietary AI-based technology, called Attack Signal Intelligence, with the goal of providing security operations with greater risk prioritization.
Veracode
Brian Roche
chief executive officer
With its Veracode Fix tool, application security provider Veracode uses GenAI to provide solution suggestions to developers, making it possible 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 introduced on-premise AI security features with its AI Security Posture Monitoring (AI-SPM) offering, which aims to protect the use of AI teams in the software progression process. The cloud security provider has since expanded its AI-SPM support to include the OpenAI API platform.
zscaler
Jay Chaudhry
Founder, Chairman, CEO
With its new secure access facility offering, Zscaler Zero Trust SASE, the company offers adaptive AI generation to enable seamless threat assessment, Zscaler said. At the same time, the company’s blackout protection product has been updated to protect you. possible knowledge leak to GenAI applications.