Best AI Agent Security Tools in 2026: 11 Platforms for Agent Identity, Access, and Runtime Control

By Camellia · Updated Nov 3, 2026

Microsoft Entra Agent ID with Agent 365 and Okta for AI Agents are the best AI agent security tools for teams that want agent identity folded into the identity provider they already run, while Astrix (now Cisco), Oasis (now Cyera Identity), Entro (now SailPoint) and Aembit are the stronger picks if the immediate problem is the API keys, tokens and service accounts agents quietly pile up. Zenity, Noma and Palo Alto Networks' Prisma AIRS sit one layer over that, watching what an agent actually does at runtime. This guide ranks 11 products on what they control, who owns them today, and what you'll pay.

This page is about securing agents, not about agents that do security work. If you want the second thing, see best AI agents for cybersecurity. If you want the threat model behind the tools, AI agent security walks through it, and AI agent guardrails covers the hard limits that should hold whatever an agent is told to do.

The category is also harder to shop than it looks, because most of its best-known independent vendors were bought within the past twelve months. Veza went to ServiceNow, CyberArk to Palo Alto Networks, Astrix to Cisco, Entro to SailPoint and Oasis to Cyera. Every one of those is a closed deal now, and the rebrands, bundling and discontinued standalone SKUs that follow a closing change what you can actually buy. Each write-up below says who owns the product today.

Key Facts

• OWASP's Top 10 for Agentic Applications, published December 9, 2025, lists Agent Goal Hijack, Tool Misuse and Identity & Privilege Abuse as its first three risks, followed by agentic supply chain, unexpected code execution, memory poisoning, insecure inter-agent communication, cascading failures, human-agent trust exploitation and rogue agents. Identity and tool access are two of the top three, which is why most tools below start there.
• Cisco's AI Readiness Index found that only 24% of organizations can control agent actions with proper guardrails and live monitoring, a figure Cisco cites in its announcement of the Astrix deal.
• Five independent agent and non-human identity vendors changed hands in a year: Veza (ServiceNow) closed on March 2, 2026, Astrix (Cisco) on June 29, 2026, Entro (SailPoint) the same day per SailPoint, and Oasis (Cyera) on September 3, 2026. Palo Alto Networks completed its CyberArk acquisition in February 2026.
• Astrix ended standalone sales of new licenses effective June 30, 2026. Existing customers keep service and support under their current agreements.
• Microsoft prices Agent 365 at $15 per user per month on an annual commitment, with Microsoft 365 E7 at $99 per user per month including it.
• Okta for AI Agents became generally available on April 30, 2026. Pricing goes through Okta sales and no free trial is offered.
• Aembit is the only product here with a published agent price: Teams at $20 per agent per month, with a free Starter plan for 3 agents.

Quick Comparison Table

How to Choose an AI Agent Security Tool in 2026

An agent is a program that holds credentials, calls tools and acts on its own. That makes three different security problems, and the tools below are strong at one or two of them rather than all three. Work out which problem hurts most before you compare vendors. What is an AI agent covers the plan-act-observe loop these controls wrap around.

1. Identity: who is this agent, and who owns it?

Most agents run on borrowed credentials: an API key in a repo, a service account nobody owns, an OAuth token a developer granted once. The identity layer inventories those, ties each to a named owner and gives agents their own short-lived credentials. Entra Agent ID, Okta for AI Agents, CyberArk, Astrix, Oasis, Entro, Veza and Aembit all play here.

2. Access: what is it allowed to reach?

Identity tells you who. Access control decides what the agent can touch and for how long. The useful controls are just-in-time access, scoped permissions and time-bound grants rather than standing privileges. Veza maps effective permissions across humans, machines and agents. Aembit and Okta issue scoped, short-lived access. CyberArk grants an agent access only for the duration of a task.

3. Runtime: what is it doing right now?

An agent with correct permissions can still do something harmful: follow a prompt injected into a document, call a destructive tool, or leak data through a connector. Runtime tools evaluate each action against context and can block it. Zenity, Noma and Prisma AIRS are built for this, and Entro adds tool-call interception on top of its credential coverage.

Two buying rules cut across all of this. First, check what is shipping today against what is planned. After a closing, vendors announce integrations before they exist, and several pages below describe roadmaps in future tense. Second, none of these tools replaces an observability layer. Security tools tell you an action was blocked or risky; AI agent observability tools tell you why the agent behaved that way, and you'll want both.

Sizing and Persona Table

1. Microsoft Entra Agent ID and Agent 365: The Default if You Run Microsoft

Entra Agent ID gives AI agents their own identity objects inside Microsoft Entra. Microsoft's documentation describes agent identities as built for scale and short lives: they can be created in bulk, governed by shared policy and retired without leaving orphaned credentials. Agents built in Copilot Studio automatically get one, with the creating user recorded as sponsor, per Microsoft Learn.

The controls Microsoft lists are familiar ones pointed at agents: a registry that inventories agents, Conditional Access that can block agents showing anomalous activity, Identity Protection for flagging unusual behavior and tracing compromised tokens, identity governance with required sponsors and time-bound access, and network controls that categorize APIs and MCP servers, per Microsoft's Entra Agent ID page.

The catch is licensing. Microsoft Learn says Agent ID is available to all Entra customers, but extending Entra security features to agents requires Agent 365, which is included in Microsoft 365 E7 and sold as an add-on to E5 and Business Premium. Microsoft's page also labels Entra Agent ID as preview in one section, so confirm which controls are generally available for your tenant before you plan around them.

Pricing: Agent 365 is $15.00 per user per month; Microsoft 365 E7, which includes it, is $99.00 per user per month ($90.45 without Teams). Annual, auto-renewing subscriptions; prices may vary by agreement. Source: microsoft.com/microsoft-agent-365.

Best for: Enterprises already standardized on Microsoft 365 and Entra that want agent governance in the same admin plane. For the wider platform comparison, see best enterprise AI agent platforms.

2. Okta for AI Agents: Agents as Part of the Workforce Directory

Okta for AI Agents registers agents as managed identities, limits them to policy-constrained scopes and methods, removes standing privileges through time-bound access, and logs every agent action to the Okta System Log. It reached general availability on April 30, 2026, per Okta's support documentation.

Okta's framing is that agents belong in the same directory as the people they act for, so an access review or offboarding event covers both. That's a strong argument if Okta already is your system of record, and a weaker one if it isn't.

Two limits are stated plainly in Okta's own documentation. It supports human-to-agent connections, not agent-to-agent connections, and no free trial is offered. If your design has agents calling other agents, you'll need to plan for that gap.

Pricing: Pricing on request. Administrators obtain the Okta for AI Agents SKU through an account executive or the sales team. Source: Okta support.

Best for: Organizations that already run Okta for workforce identity and want agents governed in the same place.

3. CyberArk (Idira) Secure AI Agents: Privileged Access Thinking Applied to Agents

Palo Alto Networks completed its acquisition of CyberArk in February 2026, and CyberArk's identity security products remain available as a standalone platform. The platform now carries the Idira name, which Palo Alto Networks describes as built on CyberArk's legacy and powered by Palo Alto Networks, per Palo Alto Networks.

Idira Secure AI Agents scans SaaS, cloud and developer environments for active agents, enriches each with ownership and permission context, enforces privilege controls such as access limited to the duration of a specific task, and audits what agents do. The pitch is straightforward: if agents are privileged users, run them through the privileged access discipline you already have.

Palo Alto Networks' own page doesn't state availability dates or pricing for the agent capability, so ask for both in writing.

Pricing: Pricing on request. Source: paloaltonetworks.com/idira.

Best for: Security teams with an existing privileged access program that want to extend it to agents instead of buying a separate tool.

4. Astrix: The Agent and Non-Human Identity Inventory, Now Part of Cisco

Astrix built its reputation on finding the machine credentials agents use: API keys, service accounts and OAuth tokens. Cisco completed the acquisition on June 29, 2026, per Cisco's announcement post, which says Cisco plans to add Astrix capabilities to Cisco Identity Intelligence and extend them to Cisco Secure Access and Duo. Those integrations are described as plans.

Astrix's own site describes three jobs: discover (one inventory of agents, MCP servers and non-human identities, including unregistered shadow agents), secure (flag excessive privileges, risky configurations and abnormal activity) and deploy (provision agents with short-lived credentials and just-in-time access through its Agent Control Plane), per astrix.security.

The buying detail that matters: Astrix ended standalone sales of new licenses effective June 30, 2026. Existing customers keep their support. New buyers should expect the capability to arrive through Cisco's platform over time, and should ask Cisco what is available today.

Pricing: Pricing on request. Source: astrix.security.

Best for: Cisco customers and teams whose first problem is discovering how many agents and credentials exist.

5. Oasis (Cyera Identity): NHI Governance Joined to Data Security

Cyera completed its acquisition of Oasis Security on September 3, 2026, in a deal valued at $1 billion. The Oasis platform now operates as Cyera Identity, the identity pillar of Cyera's platform, connected to its data intelligence layer, per Cyera's press release.

Oasis's site describes an NHI Security Cloud and an Agentic Access Management product that focuses on agent intent and time-bound access. Listed capabilities include real-time inventory, ownership context, AI security posture review of agent configurations and permissions, lifecycle management, anomaly detection and safe secret rotation. It lists integrations with identity providers (Azure, AWS, GCP, Ping, Okta, Active Directory), vaults (HashiCorp, Azure Key Vault, AWS KMS), apps such as Snowflake, Databricks, GitHub and Salesforce, and AI services including OpenAI, Microsoft Foundry, Bedrock and Copilot, per oasis.security.

The appeal of the Cyera pairing is context: knowing an agent's credentials is useful, but knowing which sensitive data it can actually reach is better. The risk is the usual one after a closing, which is a product in transition from a standalone to a pillar.

Pricing: Pricing on request; the site offers a demo request only. Source: oasis.security.

Best for: Organizations that want agent identity governance tied to where their sensitive data sits.

6. Entro: Secrets, Tokens and Tool-Call Interception Under SailPoint

SailPoint completed its acquisition of Entro Security on June 29, 2026, and says Entro's non-human identity and credential products are available now as standalone offerings, per SailPoint's press release. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

Entro's strength is the credential layer. SailPoint says it discovers secrets, tokens and certificates in CI/CD pipelines, codebases and container registries, maps which application, script or agent uses each secret, monitors token behavior for anomalies, and intercepts malicious AI tool calls in real time. It's paired with SailPoint's Agentic Fabric, which builds a unified identity graph across humans, machines and agents, per the same release.

That tool-call interception is rarer than it sounds. Most identity products stop at who has access; Entro gets involved at the moment a tool is invoked.

Pricing: Pricing on request. Source: SailPoint.

Best for: DevSecOps and identity teams already on SailPoint, or anyone whose agent risk is mostly leaked or over-scoped credentials.

7. Veza: The Access Graph That Includes Agents

ServiceNow closed its acquisition of Veza on March 2, 2026, per the update on ServiceNow's press release. ServiceNow says Veza helps govern what AI agents can access and do, and strengthens its AI Control Tower. The core asset is Veza's Access Graph, which maps access relationships across human, machine and AI identities.

On Veza's own site, the agent story is Access AI for visibility into enterprise-wide access and a protection and governance offering that aims to enforce least privilege for AI models, APIs and compute across platforms like AWS Bedrock, OpenAI and Microsoft Copilot, per veza.com. The site lists a free trial and a demo request, and no pricing.

Veza answers a different question from the discovery tools. It doesn't just find an agent; it tells you every system that agent can ultimately reach, through which chain of entitlements. That's what an auditor asks for.

Pricing: Pricing on request. Source: veza.com.

Best for: Identity governance and compliance teams that need to prove who and what can reach critical data.

8. Aembit: Short-Lived Credentials and an MCP Identity Gateway

Aembit is the independent in this group with the clearest buying path. It verifies each agent's identity, evaluates policy and runtime context before granting access, and issues short-lived, scoped credentials so agents never hold long-lived secrets. It offers one-click revocation of an agent's access without touching the user it acts for, and its MCP identity gateway provides OAuth 2.1 authorization for MCP clients, token exchange and credential isolation between agents and MCP servers, per aembit.io.

For engineering teams building their own agents, that's the practical shape of least privilege: the agent asks, policy decides, a credential is minted for the task and expires.

It's also the only product here that publishes per-agent pricing. Note that personal agents such as ChatGPT count as agents on the agentic plans, and exceeding the free plan moves you to an Enterprise trial rather than a hard stop.

Pricing: Agentic AI plans are billed per AI agent: Starter free (3 agents, one MCP Identity Gateway, 5 authorization policies, 24-hour log retention); Teams $20 per agent per month (10 agents, scalable to 500, 7-day log retention); Enterprise custom (unlimited agents, conditional access, 24x7 support). Workload plans are billed per workload, with Teams also at $20 per workload per month. Source: aembit.io/pricing.

Best for: Engineering-led teams that want a fast, priced route to credential-less agents and MCP access control.

9. Zenity: Intent-Based Runtime Security for Agents

Zenity concentrates on what an agent decides to do. Its platform has three parts: surface (find which agents are running, what they can affect and which are exploitable), enforce (set limits on agent actions and block harmful ones before they take effect) and protect (detect threats, support investigation and map findings to OWASP and MITRE ATLAS), per zenity.io.

It reviews the whole execution path, including tool calls, memory access and data use, to catch harmful outcomes even when each input looks harmless. Coverage spans SaaS applications, custom agent platforms and end-user devices, and guardrails can be applied before deployment to stop over-permissioned configurations.

This is the layer that matters when permissions are correct and behavior is the problem, such as an agent following a hidden instruction in a document. It won't replace your identity tooling, and Zenity's site routes pricing to a demo or a security assessment.

Pricing: Pricing on request. Source: zenity.io.

Best for: Security operations teams that need to watch and constrain agents already running in SaaS and low-code platforms.

10. Noma Security: Approve, Constrain and Kill Agents

Noma describes itself as an agent security and governance platform. Its runtime layer evaluates each agent action against the full session, the user the agent acts for, the data it can reach and its normal behavior, and can stop destructive actions, steer the agent, alert a human, mask data or trigger a kill switch, per noma.security.

The access side is what separates it from a pure monitor: security teams can approve, review or block agents, MCP servers and skills, scoped by user, team or tool sensitivity. It also looks for agent supply chain risks and misconfigurations, and tests AI applications with multi-turn attacks. Its policy approach lets you define a rule once and apply it across the control points you already use, with integrations listed for Claude, Microsoft Copilot, AWS and MCP.

The MCP allowlist idea is worth pausing on. Most teams have developers connecting agents to MCP servers nobody reviewed, and a central approve-or-block list is the cheapest control to add first.

Pricing: Pricing on request; the site offers a demo. Source: noma.security.

Best for: Enterprises that want a central gate on which agents, MCP servers and skills may run, plus a runtime kill switch.

11. Palo Alto Networks Prisma AIRS: Network-Layer Runtime Protection and an AI Gateway

Prisma AIRS is Palo Alto Networks' AI security platform. Its page lists AI runtime security, agent identity security, an AI Gateway, agentic endpoint security and detection of prompt injection and sensitive data exposure, with Network Intercept and API Intercept deployment modes, per paloaltonetworks.com.

The gateway piece comes from Portkey, which Palo Alto Networks bought and closed on May 29, 2026. Palo Alto Networks says Portkey becomes the foundational AI Gateway for Prisma AIRS, inspecting AI traffic at runtime, authenticating each agent interaction through Idira to block unauthorized tool use and lateral movement, and adding telemetry through Chronosphere, per its Portkey press release.

Prisma AIRS is best read as a platform play. It's strongest where you already run Palo Alto Networks firewalls and identity. Its public page doesn't describe MCP-specific controls beyond linking a webinar, so ask for a live demonstration of MCP tool-call enforcement before counting on it.

Pricing: Pricing on request; the page offers a demo request. Source: paloaltonetworks.com.

Best for: Palo Alto Networks customers who want agent runtime protection and a gateway under one vendor. For other platform options, see best AI agent platforms.

AI Agent Security Buying Mistakes to Avoid

How to Choose: Decision Framework

Choose the layer first, then the vendor. Identity and access decisions usually follow whichever identity provider you already run. Runtime decisions follow where your agents live.

What to Do Next

Start with an honest count. List every agent your teams run, including the ones in SaaS and the ones a developer wired up over a weekend, and write down which credential each uses and who owns it. That list tells you which layer to buy first: if it's full of unknowns, buy discovery; if it's full of broad standing keys, buy access control; if the permissions look right but you can't see behavior, buy runtime control.

Then shortlist by ownership and incumbency. If you run Microsoft or Okta, test their agent products first. If you need to cover agents those tools can't see, add one of the specialist tools and ask in writing what ships today. For agents that drive a browser on your behalf, the risks are sharper still, and best AI browser agents covers credential handling there. For the wider picture of agents that act on their own, best autonomous AI agents shows what you're being asked to secure.

If you let an agent spend money, the identity questions above apply to payments too: best agentic commerce platforms covers how agent payments are authorized and capped. And for always-on assistants that hold your own credentials, see best personal AI agents.