HiddenLayer in the News

AUSTIN, Texas — August 18 — HiddenLayer, a leader in security for artificial intelligence, today announced its partnership with Idaho National Labs and contribution to  Prometheus, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) initiative selected to receive $60 million in Phase II funding over three years, subject to appropriations, through the Genesis Mission.

Prometheus brings together national laboratories, academia, and more than 20 industry partners to apply artificial intelligence to some of the nuclear energy sector’s most complex challenges. The initiative will explore how AI can help accelerate the design, licensing, manufacturing, construction, and operation of nuclear reactors while maintaining the safety, security, and technical rigor required for critical infrastructure.

As part of the Prometheus collaboration, HiddenLayer will contribute its expertise in securing AI systems against emerging threats and vulnerabilities, helping ensure that security remains foundational as AI-enabled technologies move from research into real-world nuclear energy applications.

“AI has enormous potential to accelerate scientific discovery and transform critical industries, but that opportunity has to be matched by an equally strong commitment to security,” said Chris Sestito, CEO and co-founder of HiddenLayer. “Prometheus represents exactly the type of collaboration required to move AI innovation forward responsibly. We’re proud to bring HiddenLayer’s AI security expertise to an initiative with the potential to strengthen both America’s energy future and its technological leadership.”

The Department of Energy announced the Prometheus selection as part of the Genesis Mission, a national initiative focused on using AI to accelerate scientific discovery, strengthen national security, and advance energy innovation. Prometheus is the first Phase II award announced under the Genesis Mission.

Led by Idaho National Laboratory, Prometheus includes Idaho National Laboratory, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Argonne National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories alongside academic institutions and industry partners. Together, the organizations will work to develop AI-enabled capabilities across nuclear reactor development and operations, nuclear fuel fabrication, and nuclear legacy document management.

Securing AI for Critical Infrastructure

As AI becomes increasingly embedded in critical infrastructure, organizations must address risks that extend beyond those associated with traditional software. AI models and systems introduce a distinct attack surface that can be targeted throughout development, deployment, and operation.

The collaboration builds on HiddenLayer's work with government agencies and enterprises to identify AI risk, test AI systems for vulnerabilities, and protect AI models and applications against adversarial threats.

The Prometheus award reflects a growing national focus on building the infrastructure, partnerships, and security capabilities necessary to deploy AI in high-impact scientific and critical infrastructure environments.

About HiddenLayer

HiddenLayer protects predictive, generative, and agentic AI applications across the entire AI lifecycle, from discovery and AI supply chain security to attack simulation and runtime protection. Backed by patented technology and industry-leading adversarial AI research, our platform is purpose-built to defend AI systems against evolving threats. HiddenLayer protects intellectual property, helps ensure regulatory compliance, and enables organizations to safely adopt and scale AI with confidence.

For more information, visit hiddenlayer.com.

Media Contact

SutherlandGold for HiddenLayer

hiddenlayer@sutherlandgold.com 

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Austin, TX — August 12, 2026 — HiddenLayer, the leading AI security company, today announced the appointment of Mike Gesnaldo as Chief Revenue Officer (CRO). Gesnaldo will lead the company's Go-To-Market organizations as HiddenLayer continues to expand its AI Security Platform and help enterprises securely adopt AI.

Gesnaldo brings more than 20 years of experience building and scaling go-to-market organizations at some of cybersecurity's most recognized companies, including CrowdStrike, Tanium, and Dazz. Throughout his career, he has helped establish foundational go-to-market strategies for emerging cybersecurity innovators while scaling high-performing revenue organizations. His background spans both cybersecurity products and services, with a proven track record of transforming services organizations into strategic growth engines that accelerate product adoption, expand customer relationships, and drive long-term recurring revenue.

"As organizations rapidly integrate AI into critical business processes, the need for purpose-built AI security has never been greater," said Chris Sestito, CEO and co-founder of HiddenLayer. "Mike has repeatedly helped category-defining cybersecurity companies scale through periods of rapid growth. His experience building world-class revenue organizations and deep understanding of the enterprise security market make him the ideal leader to help guide HiddenLayer through our next phase."

Gesnaldo joins HiddenLayer as enterprises increasingly move AI from experimentation into production, creating demand for security solutions purpose-built to protect AI systems throughout their lifecycle.

“It’s clear we're at the crux of the most significant technology shifts of our generation," said Mike Gesnaldo, Chief Revenue Officer at HiddenLayer. "HiddenLayer isn't simply participating in the AI revolution; we're helping define what secure AI looks like for enterprises, backed by research that discovers emerging threats, professional services that guide customers at every stage of their AI adoption journey, and channel partners we go to market with to bring that security to organizations everywhere. I'm excited to join the team at such a pivotal moment and help more organizations confidently adopt AI with security built in from the start."

About HiddenLayer

HiddenLayer secures agentic, generative, and predictive AI applications across the entire AI lifecycle, from discovery and AI supply chain security to attack simulation and runtime protection. Backed by patented technology and industry-leading adversarial AI research, our platform is purpose-built to defend AI systems against evolving threats. HiddenLayer protects intellectual property, helps ensure regulatory compliance, and enables organizations to safely adopt and scale AI with confidence.

For more information, visit www.hiddenlayer.com.

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Austin, TX, August 3, 2026 - HiddenLayer, the leading AI security company, today announced Agent Harness Security, a new solution that extends the HiddenLayer AI Security Platform’s Runtime Security module to secure AI coding agents at runtime. The new solution gives security teams the runtime control they need to safely scale AI-assisted software development by protecting source code, secrets, and infrastructure from unsafe agent actions without slowing developers down. Built on HiddenLayer's AI Security Platform and powered by HiddenLayer's adversarial AI threat research, Agent Harness Security integrates directly into each coding agent's native hook surface to detect and stop prompt injection, sensitive data exposure, and unsafe command execution as they occur.

AI coding agents are rapidly becoming central to enterprise software development. Gartner predicts that by 2028, 90% of enterprise software engineers will use AI code assistants, up from less than 14% in early 2024. But these tools have moved far beyond mere code suggestions. They can now run shell commands, modify repositories, install dependencies, and act on context pulled from files, tool outputs, and external sources.

That shift turns every developer's machine into an AI execution environment, where prompt injection embedded in a README or a poisoned tool response can turn legitimate developer access into the attack path. Organizations cannot safely scale AI coding agents unless they can see what those agents are doing and stop unsafe actions when needed. They also cannot rely on controls that sit outside the workflow and slow developers down, breaking the productivity gains AI coding tools were meant to deliver.

Agent harnesses are the execution environments that enable AI agents to plan, reason, and take actions by connecting models with context, memory, tools, skills, and orchestration logic. As organizations increasingly adopt AI agents, these harnesses create a new runtime attack surface where indirect attacks can influence agent behavior and lead to data exposure, unauthorized actions, or other security risks. 

For AI coding agents, Agent Harness Security provides inline runtime control within the coding agent workflow. It gives security teams visibility into agent activity across prompts, tool calls, shell commands, file edits, and repository interactions. It can redact sensitive information before a model sees it, steer agents away from poisoned tool responses, and stop unsafe actions before they pose a risk. Because every coding agent exposes different controls, HiddenLayer applies the strongest enforcement each platform supports and clearly shows security teams what is working, where it is working, and why.

"AI coding agents are now among the most active AI systems inside the enterprise. They run on developer machines, execute commands, modify source code, and act on sensitive context in real time," said Chris Sestito, CEO of HiddenLayer. "Securing them takes more than deciding whether to allow or block an action. Security teams need to control what agents see, reason over, and act on before something goes wrong. That is what our Agent Harness Security solution delivers, securing AI coding agents today, and it's what enterprises need to scale AI coding agents with confidence."

With Agent Harness Security, organizations can:

• See what AI coding agents are doing in the codebase. Follow coding agent activity from the prompt that started the task through the files opened, commands run, dependencies installed, code changed, and pull requests prepared. Security and AppSec teams get the session context they need to quickly investigate behavior.

• Catch threats inside the development workflow. Detect prompt injection embedded in source files and tool outputs, secrets flowing into AI tool calls, unsafe command execution, malicious or unexpected dependency installs, and obfuscated payloads designed to evade review.

• Keep developers moving while reducing risk. Redact secrets before they reach the model and steer agents away from poisoned tool responses with corrective context. Where block-only enforcement would interrupt a long-running CI/CD pipeline and force a developer to step in, content-shaping lets the agent continue safely on its task and preserves the productivity gains AI coding agents were brought in to deliver.

• Trust what is actually enforced. Get clear reporting on which controls are active for each coding agent and the enforcement level supported by each platform. Security teams can see whether an action was detected, redacted, blocked, or limited by the underlying agent platform.

“As we scale the use of AI coding agents across our engineering organization, maintaining visibility and control is essential. Our focus is not only on enabling engineers to benefit from AI, but also on empowering citizen developers to experiment with confidence — all while ensuring agent activity can be monitored, governed, and constrained when necessary. That’s what gives us the confidence to move fast in a space where security and compliance can’t be an afterthought.” - Jaclyn Miller, CPO & Vanessa DeGennaro, VP of Engineering at Zivian Health.

HiddenLayer’s Agent Harness Security solution is available today as a stand-alone solution, securing AI coding agents and extending HiddenLayer’s runtime protection directly into developer environments where AI agents read code, execute commands, and interact with enterprise systems.

Learn more about Agent Harness Security and how it secures AI coding agents at runtime. Visit https://www.hiddenlayer.com/solutions/agent-harness-security or contact sales@hiddenlayer.com to schedule a demo.

About HiddenLayer

HiddenLayer secures agentic, generative, and predictive AI applications across the entire AI lifecycle, from discovery and AI supply chain security to attack simulation and runtime protection. Backed by patented technology and industry-leading adversarial AI research, our platform is purpose-built to defend AI systems against evolving threats. HiddenLayer protects intellectual property, helps ensure regulatory compliance, and enables organizations to safely adopt and scale AI with confidence.

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Cohere North secured by HiddenLayer enables enterprises to deploy AI agents across business systems with built-in protection against AI-native threats.

AUSTIN, Texas — June 29th, 2026 — HiddenLayer, the leading AI security company, today announced a collaboration with Cohere, the world's leading sovereign AI company, to help enterprises securely deploy agentic AI at scale. By combining Cohere's North platform with HiddenLayer's AI Security Platform capabilities, organizations can confidently deploy AI agents that interact with enterprise systems while defending against AI-native threats.

As enterprises move from AI experimentation to production, they're running into the same challenge of AI teams wanting to deploy agents that automate workflows and connect to business systems, while security teams are concerned about risks such as prompt injection, data leakage, model attacks, and malicious tool use. Together, HiddenLayer and Cohere are helping organizations overcome that barrier by pairing enterprise AI with purpose-built security designed for AI systems.

"Agentic AI dramatically increases the attack surface for enterprises. These systems are highly vulnerable to prompt injection, data exfiltration, and abuse of the tools and systems they're connected to,” says Chris Sestito, Co-Founder and CEO of HiddenLayer. “Organizations can't deploy agents at scale without security designed specifically for AI systems and the threats they face. Our collaboration with Cohere secures the AI layer that traditional controls miss, giving customers the confidence to deploy agentic AI in production, not just experiment with it.”

The collaboration is grounded in real-world deployment. HiddenLayer evaluated Cohere’s North platform against its own security standards before deploying it internally for employee use, demonstrating how organizations can securely adopt agentic AI and integrate it into core systems and workflows.

The North platform enables organizations to connect cutting-edge AI models to enterprise applications, workflows, and data sources, making it easier to automate work across the business. HiddenLayer complements those capabilities by securing the agents, models, prompts, and integrations that power those workflows at runtime, helping organizations detect and respond to AI-native attacks that traditional security tools were not designed to address.

"Regulated industries and governments are adopting agentic AI, but only when those systems are sovereign, secure, and fully under their control," said Nic Morales, VP of Customer Experience at Cohere. "North was built for exactly that. Together with HiddenLayer, we’re giving customers a hardened foundation to run agents that take meaningful action across sensitive systems and data. This collaboration enables organizations to move from experimentation to real production deployments with trust."

Key capabilities include:

• Deploy AI agents that securely connect to enterprise applications, data, and workflows
• Detect prompt injection, model attacks, and malicious tool use at runtime
• Reduce the risk of data leakage through AI agents and enterprise integrations
• Monitor AI activity with governance and runtime security designed for production environments
• Support compliance with audit-ready visibility into AI interactions

Together, HiddenLayer and Cohere help organizations move agentic AI from pilot to production by combining frontier enterprise AI with purpose-built AI security.

To discuss the collaboration and the future of secure enterprise AI, HiddenLayer and Cohere will host a joint webinar on June 30th. The session will explore how organizations can securely scale agentic AI while protecting the systems, data, and workflows that drive their business.

Register for the webinar at: https://events.cohere.com/hiddenlayer/

About HiddenLayer

HiddenLayer protects agentic, generative, and predictive AI applications across the entire AI lifecycle, from discovery and AI supply chain security to attack simulation and runtime protection. Backed by patented technology and industry-leading adversarial AI research, our platform is purpose-built to defend AI systems against evolving threats. HiddenLayer protects intellectual property, helps ensure regulatory compliance, and enables organizations to safely adopt and scale AI with confidence.

About Cohere

Cohere, founded in 2019, is a security-first enterprise AI leader building foundation models and end-to-end products to solve real-world business problems. We partner with organizations to deliver seamless integration, deep customization, and user-friendly solutions. Our all-in-one platform provides maximum security, privacy, and deployment flexibility across public clouds, private environments, and on-premises. Headquartered globally in Toronto and San Francisco, Cohere also operates offices in London, New York, Montreal, Paris, and Seoul, serving customers worldwide.

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The company has raised ~$1.6BUSD from strategic technology investors (Nvidia, AMD Ventures, Salesforce Ventures, Oracle, Cisco), institutional investors (Radical Ventures, Inovia Capital, PSP Investments, HOOPP, BDC, Nexxus), and AI pioneers including Geoffrey Hinton, Fei-Fei Li, Pieter Abbeel, and Raquel Urtasun. For more information, visit cohere.com.

Building on its Unity Catalog integration, HiddenLayer is working with Databricks to extend model security, AI threat intelligence, and detection-and-response capabilities into Databricks-governed AI runtime workflows

AUSTIN, Texas — June 17, 2026 — HiddenLayer, the leading provider of security for AI, today announced its participation in the Databricks Unity AI Gateway ecosystem, advancing the company’s vision of helping enterprises securely build, deploy, and operate AI at scale.

As organizations move from AI experimentation to production use of generative AI, AI agents, and Model Context Protocol integrations, the security challenge has changed. Enterprise AI systems are no longer isolated model calls. They are interconnected workloads that retrieve data, invoke tools, interact with APIs, execute actions, and operate across business-critical environments. Securing those systems requires more than traditional application controls or governance checklists. It requires visibility into how AI is being used, intelligence about how AI systems can be attacked, and security workflows designed specifically for models, agents, and AI runtime behavior.

Databricks Unity AI Gateway provides a centralized layer for governing enterprise AI interactions across models, agents, tools, MCP servers, providers, and frameworks. Through the Unity AI Gateway ecosystem, HiddenLayer is working with Databricks to bring AI-native security intelligence and detection-and-response capabilities into the workflows customers use to manage and scale AI on the Databricks platform.

The collaboration builds on HiddenLayer’s existing work with Databricks Unity Catalog, where HiddenLayer helps customers scan and assess AI models before deployment. With Unity AI Gateway, HiddenLayer is extending that security approach closer to the runtime path, helping organizations protect not only the models they deploy, but also the agents, prompts, responses, tool calls, and AI interactions those systems generate in production.

"Organizations are rapidly adopting AI agents and autonomous systems, but many are doing so without the security controls needed to manage emerging risks," said Chris Sestito, CEO and Co-founder of HiddenLayer. "HiddenLayer provides AI-native security across the AI lifecycle, helping customers protect models, applications, and agents from evolving threats. Through the Unity AI Gateway ecosystem, we're helping organizations combine strong governance with the security required to confidently scale AI and deploy agents to production environments."

HiddenLayer’s participation in the Unity AI Gateway ecosystem is designed to help customers address the emerging security requirements of enterprise AI, including:

• Model security before deployment: Scan model artifacts and versions for malicious code, vulnerabilities, unsafe dependencies, tampering, and other AI supply-chain risks before they become production assets.
• Runtime visibility for AI workloads: Monitor activity across prompts, responses, model behavior, agent actions, tool usage, and MCP-enabled workflows to understand how AI systems are operating in real environments.
• AI-specific threat detection: Identify attack patterns such as prompt injection, data leakage, model manipulation, unsafe tool use, model theft, adversarial ML techniques, and emerging agentic AI threats.
• Policy controls and guardrails: Apply security and policy enforcement to help prevent unsafe behavior, protect sensitive data, and reduce exposure across enterprise AI applications.
• Detection and response workflows for AI: Turn AI activity into actionable security signals that security teams can investigate, triage, and respond to through established operational processes.
• Support for governance, audit, and compliance programs: Provide visibility, evidence, policy enforcement, and risk context that help organizations demonstrate control over the AI systems they deploy.

This approach aligns with the broader Databricks strategy for governed enterprise AI. Unity Catalog established a foundation for managing and securing data and AI assets. Unity AI Gateway extends that foundation to the runtime interactions between models, agents, tools, MCP servers, and AI applications. Together, they help organizations bring context, control, and choice to enterprise AI while enabling customers to govern AI usage across models, agents, and applications. HiddenLayer adds specialized security depth to that architecture, helping customers detect and respond to risks that are unique to AI systems.

"As organizations move AI into production, governance must extend beyond access controls to include visibility and protection across AI interactions,” said Stephen Orban, SVP, Product Partnerships and Ecosystem, Databricks. “By integrating HiddenLayer with Databricks Unity AI Gateway, customers can monitor AI activity, enforce guardrails, and manage risk across models, agents, and tools." 

The announcement comes as enterprises increasingly recognize AI security as a distinct cybersecurity discipline. Responsible AI, governance, and compliance programs remain important, but they do not replace the need to defend the AI systems themselves. Models can be tampered with. Agents can be manipulated. Prompts and tool calls can be abused. Sensitive data can leak through AI workflows. Runtime behavior can indicate compromise, misuse, or adversarial activity.

HiddenLayer is purpose-built for that threat surface. By working with Databricks, HiddenLayer is helping customers secure AI where it is being built, governed, deployed, and operated, bringing model security, AI threat intelligence, runtime monitoring, policy controls, and detection-and-response capabilities into the enterprise AI workflows and platform customers already trust.

To learn more about HiddenLayer and its approach to securing AI systems, visit www.hiddenlayer.com.

About HiddenLayer

HiddenLayer protects agentic, generative, and predictive AI applications across the entire AI lifecycle, from discovery and AI supply chain security to attack simulation and runtime protection. Backed by patented technology and industry-leading adversarial AI research, our platform is purpose-built to defend AI systems against evolving threats. HiddenLayer protects intellectual property, helps ensure regulatory compliance, and enables organizations to safely adopt and scale AI with confidence.

Contact

SutherlandGold for HiddenLayer
hiddenlayer@sutherlandgold.com

AUSTIN, TX – June 2, 2026 – HiddenLayer, a leading provider of AI security solutions for enterprises and government organizations, today announced that it has achieved Awardable status through the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office’s (CDAO) Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace.

The Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace is the premier offering of Tradewinds, the Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) suite of tools and services designed to accelerate the procurement and adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML), data, and analytics capabilities.

HiddenLayer’s platform is designed to secure AI systems and AI Agents throughout the entire AI lifecycle by providing detection, monitoring, and protection against emerging AI threats and vulnerabilities. HiddenLayer supports organizations across the public and private sectors in safely deploying and operationalizing AI technologies.

“We are honored to receive Awardable status through the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace,” said Christopher Sestito, CEO and Co-Founder at HiddenLayer. “As AI adoption accelerates across the federal government and national security community, securing AI systems and AI Agents is mission-critical. This designation reinforces our commitment to helping government organizations confidently adopt AI technologies while protecting them from evolving threats.”

HiddenLayer’s video describing the AI Security Platform is accessible to government customers through the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace and demonstrates how organizations can strengthen the security and resilience of AI and machine learning systems against adversarial attacks, model compromise, and emerging AI-specific cyber risks.

HiddenLayer was recognized among a competitive field of applicants whose solutions demonstrated innovation, scalability, and potential impact on national security  missions. Government customers interested in viewing the video solution can create a Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace account at www.tradewindai.com.

About HiddenLayer

HiddenLayer protects predictive, generative, and agentic AI applications across the entire AI lifecycle, from discovery and AI supply chain security to attack simulation and runtime protection. Backed by patented technology and industry-leading adversarial AI research, our platform is purpose-built to defend AI systems against evolving threats. HiddenLayer protects intellectual property, helps ensure regulatory compliance, and enables organizations to safely adopt and scale AI with confidence.

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About the Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace

The Tradewinds Solutions Marketplace is a digital repository of post-competition, readily awardable pitch videos that address the Department of Defense’s most significant challenges in the Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning (AI/ML), data, and analytics space. All awardable solutions have been assessed through complex scoring rubrics and competitive procedures and are available to government customers with a Marketplace account. Tradewinds is housed within the DoD’s Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO).

Media Contact

SutherlandGold for HiddenLayer

hiddenlayer@sutherlandgold.com 

Austin, TX – March 23, 2026 – HiddenLayer, the leading AI security company, today announced the next generation of its AI Runtime Security module, introducing new capabilities designed to protect autonomous AI agents as they make decisions and take action. As enterprises increasingly adopt agentic AI systems, these capabilities extend HiddenLayer’s AI Runtime Security platform to secure what matters most in agentic AI: how agents behave and take actions.

The update introduces three core capabilities for securing agentic AI workloads:

• Agentic Runtime Visibility

• Agentic Investigation & Threat Hunting

• Agentic Detection & Enforcement

One in eight AI breaches are linked to agentic systems, according to HiddenLayer’s 2026 AI Threat Landscape Report. Each agent interaction expands the operational blast radius and introduces new forms of runtime risk. Yet most AI security controls stop at prompts, policies, or static permissions, and execution-time behavior remains largely unobserved and uncontrolled.

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These new agentic security capabilities give security teams visibility into how agents execute. They enable them to detect and stop risks in multi-step autonomous workflows, including prompt injection, malicious tool calls, and data exfiltration before sensitive information is exposed.

“AI agents operate at machine speed. If they’re compromised, they can access systems, move data, and take action in seconds — far faster than any human could intervene,” said Chris Sestito, CEO of HiddenLayer. “That velocity changes the security equation entirely. Agentic Runtime Security gives enterprises the real-time visibility and control they need to stop damage before it spreads.”

With these new capabilities, security teams can:

• Gain complete runtime visibility into AI agent behavior — Reconstruct every session to see how agents interact with data, tools, and other agents, providing full operational context behind every action and decision.
• Investigate and hunt across agentic activity — Search, filter, and pivot across sessions, tools, and execution paths to identify anomalous behavior and uncover evolving threats. Validated findings can be easily operationalized into enforceable runtime policies, reducing friction between investigation and response.
• Detect and prevent multi-step agentic threats — Identify prompt injections, malicious tool calls, data exfiltration, and cascading attack chains unique to autonomous agents, ensuring real-time protection from evolving risks.
• Enforce adaptive security policies in real time — Automatically control agent access, redact sensitive data, and block unsafe or unauthorized actions based on context, keeping operations compliant and contained.

“As we expand the use of AI agents across our business, maintaining control and oversight is critical,” said Charles Iheagwara, AI/ML Security Leader at AstraZeneca. "Our goal is to have full scope visibility across all platforms and silos, so we’re focused on putting capabilities in place to monitor agent execution and ensure they operate safely and reliably at scale.”

Agentic Runtime Security supports enterprises as they expand agentic AI adoption, integrating directly into agent gateways and execution frameworks to enable phased deployment without application rewrites.

“Agentic AI changes the risk model because decisions and actions are happening continuously at runtime,” said Caroline Wong, Chief Strategy Officer at Axari. “HiddenLayer’s new capabilities give us the visibility into agent behavior that’s been missing, so we can safely move these systems into production with more confidence.”

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The new agentic capabilities for HiddenLayer’s AI Runtime Security are available now as part of HiddenLayer’s AI Security Platform, enabling organizations to gain immediate agentic runtime visibility and detection and expand to full threat-hunting and enforcement as their AI agent programs mature.

Find more information at hiddenlayer.com/agents and contact sales@hiddenlayer.com to schedule a demo.

HiddenLayer secures agentic, generative, and predictAutonomous agents now account for more than 1 in 8 reported AI breaches as enterprises move from experimentation to production.

March 18, 2026 – Austin, TX – HiddenLayer, the leading AI security company protecting enterprises from adversarial machine learning and emerging AI-driven threats, today released its 2026 AI Threat Landscape Report, a comprehensive analysis of the most pressing risks facing organizations as AI systems evolve from assistive tools to autonomous agents capable of independent action.

Based on a survey of 250 IT and security leaders, the report reveals a growing tension at the heart of enterprise AI adoption: organizations are embedding AI deeper into critical operations while simultaneously expanding their exposure to entirely new attack surfaces.

While agentic AI remains in the early stages of enterprise deployment, the risks are already materializing. One in eight reported AI breaches is now linked to agentic systems, signaling that security frameworks and governance controls are struggling to keep pace with AI’s rapid evolution. As these systems gain the ability to browse the web, execute code, access tools, and carry out multi-step workflows, their autonomy introduces new vectors for exploitation and real-world system compromise.

“Agentic AI has evolved faster in the past 12 months than most enterprise security programs have in the past five years,” said Chris Sestito, CEO and Co-founder of HiddenLayer. “It’s also what makes them risky. The more authority you give these systems, the more reach they have, and the more damage they can cause if compromised. Security has to evolve without limiting the very autonomy that makes these systems valuable.”

Other findings in the report include:

AI Supply Chain Exposure Is Widening

• Malware hidden in public model and code repositories emerged as the most cited source of AI-related breaches (35%).
• Yet 93% of respondents continue to rely on open repositories for innovation, revealing a trade-off between speed and security.

Visibility and Transparency Gaps Persist

• Over a third (31%) of organizations do not know whether they experienced an AI security breach in the past 12 months.
• Although 85% support mandatory breach disclosure, more than half (53%) admit they have withheld breach reporting due to fear of backlash, underscoring a widening hypocrisy between transparency advocacy and real-world behavior.

Shadow AI Is Accelerating Across Enterprises

• Over 3 in 4 (76%) of organizations now cite shadow AI as a definite or probable problem, up from 61% in 2025, a 15-point year-over-year increase and one of the largest shifts in the dataset. 
• Yet only one-third (34%) of organizations partner externally for AI threat detection, indicating that awareness is accelerating faster than governance and detection mechanisms.

Ownership and Investment Remain Misaligned

• While many organizations recognize AI security risks, internal responsibility remains unclear with 73% reporting internal conflict over ownership of AI security controls.
• Additionally, while 91% of organizations added AI security budgets for 2025, more than 40% allocated less than 10% of their budget on AI security.

“One of the clearest signals in this year’s research is how fast AI has evolved from simple chat interfaces to fully agentic systems capable of autonomous action,” said Marta Janus, Principal Security Researcher at HiddenLayer. “As soon as agents can browse the web, execute code, and trigger real-world workflows, prompt injection is no longer just a model flaw. It becomes an operational security risk with direct paths to system compromise. The rise of agentic AI fundamentally changes the threat model, and most enterprise controls were not designed for software that can think, decide, and act on its own.”

What’s New in AI: Key Trends Shaping the 2026 Threat Landscape

Over the past year, three major shifts have expanded both the power, and the risk, of enterprise AI deployments:

• Agentic AI systems moved rapidly from experimentation to production in 2025. These agents can browse the web, execute code, access files, and interact with other agents—transforming prompt injection, supply chain attacks, and misconfigurations into pathways for real-world system compromise.
• Reasoning and self-improving models have become mainstream, enabling AI systems to autonomously plan, reflect, and make complex decisions. While this improves accuracy and utility, it also increases the potential blast radius of compromise, as a single manipulated model can influence downstream systems at scale.
• Smaller, highly specialized “edge” AI models are increasingly deployed on devices, vehicles, and critical infrastructure, shifting AI execution away from centralized cloud controls. This decentralization introduces new security blind spots, particularly in regulated and safety-critical environments.

The report finds that security controls, authentication, and monitoring have not kept pace with this growth, leaving many organizations exposed by default.

HiddenLayer’s AI Security Platform secures AI systems across the full AI lifecycle with four integrated modules: AI Discovery, which identifies and inventories AI assets across environments to give security teams complete visibility into their AI footprint; AI Supply Chain Security, which evaluates the security and integrity of models and AI artifacts before deployment; AI Attack Simulation, which continuously tests AI systems for vulnerabilities and unsafe behaviors using adversarial techniques; and AI Runtime Security, which monitors models in production to detect and stop attacks in real time.

Access the full 2026 AI Threat Landscape Report.

About HiddenLayer

ive AI applications across the entire AI lifecycle, from discovery and AI supply chain security to attack simulation and runtime protection. Backed by patented technology and industry-leading adversarial AI research, our platform is purpose-built to defend AI systems against evolving threats. HiddenLayer protects intellectual property, helps ensure regulatory compliance, and enables organizations to safely adopt and scale AI with confidence.

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Contact

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SutherlandGold for HiddenLayer

hiddenlayer@sutherlandgold.com 

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Austin, TX — March 10, 2026 —  HiddenLayer, the leading AI security company protecting enterprises from adversarial machine learning and emerging AI-driven threats, today announced that Malcolm Harkins, Chief Security & Trust Officer, has been inducted into the CSO Hall of Fame, recognizing his decades-long contributions to advancing cybersecurity and information risk management.

The CSO Hall of Fame honors influential leaders who have demonstrated exceptional impact in strengthening security practices, building resilient organizations, and advancing the broader cybersecurity profession. Harkins joins an accomplished group of security executives recognized for shaping how organizations manage risk and defend against emerging threats.

Throughout his career, Harkins has helped organizations navigate complex security challenges while aligning cybersecurity with business strategy. His work has focused on strengthening governance, improving risk management practices, and helping enterprises responsibly adopt emerging technologies, including artificial intelligence.

At HiddenLayer, Harkins plays a key role in guiding the company’s security and trust initiatives as organizations increasingly deploy AI across critical business functions. His leadership helps ensure that enterprises can adopt AI securely while maintaining resilience, compliance, and operational integrity.

“Malcolm’s career has consistently demonstrated what it means to lead in cybersecurity,” said Chris Sestito, CEO and Co-founder of HiddenLayer. “His commitment to advancing security risk management and helping organizations navigate emerging technologies has had a lasting impact across the industry. We’re incredibly proud to see him recognized by the CSO Hall of Fame.”

The 2026 CSO Hall of Fame inductees will be formally recognized at the CSO Cybersecurity Awards & Conference, taking place May 11–13, 2026, in Nashville, Tennessee.

The CSO Hall of Fame, presented by CSO, recognizes security leaders whose careers have significantly advanced the practice of information risk management and security. Inductees are selected for their leadership, innovation, and lasting contributions to the cybersecurity community.

About HiddenLayer

HiddenLayer secures agentic, generative, and predictive AI applications across the entire AI lifecycle, from discovery and AI supply chain security to attack simulation and runtime protection. Backed by patented technology and industry-leading adversarial AI research, our platform is purpose-built to defend AI systems against evolving threats. HiddenLayer protects intellectual property, helps ensure regulatory compliance, and enables organizations to safely adopt and scale AI with confidence.

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Contact

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SutherlandGold for HiddenLayer

hiddenlayer@sutherlandgold.com