Tenet Security Launches with $6M Seed Funding

A new venture, Tenet Security, has emerged from the ranks of former Cisco artificial intelligence security specialists, aiming to address the escalating risks associated with autonomous AI agents in enterprise environments. The company officially unveiled its platform, designed to preemptively identify and neutralize malicious actions by AI agents before they can impact critical business systems. This innovative approach centers on a proprietary technology dubbed Agent-Side Simulation, which meticulously models an agent's potential future operations. If a simulated pathway is deemed hazardous, Tenet intervenes, preventing harm and providing a detailed explanation for the blocked action.

The urgency behind Tenet Security's launch is underscored by the rapid adoption of AI agents that are increasingly empowered to execute code, access sensitive databases, and modify live systems. A significant challenge identified by the company is the often-unseen proliferation of these agents, with organizations potentially operating up to five times more AI agents than their security teams are aware of. "Organizations are accelerating AI agent deployment for unprecedented productivity gains," stated Tenet co-founder and CEO Barak Sternberg. "However, this rapid integration introduces complex interactions between agents, data, and systems that traditional security frameworks are ill-equipped to manage."

Sternberg, alongside fellow co-founder Nevo Poran, brings a wealth of experience from their tenure at Cisco, where they focused on AI defense and offensive strategies against autonomous systems. Their prior entrepreneurial success includes building Wild Pointer, a cybersecurity firm that achieved seven-figure annual revenues serving Fortune 500 clients. Both founders are recognized figures in the cybersecurity community, having presented at prominent conferences like DEF CON and Black Hat.

Tenet Security's market entry is bolstered by the findings from its Tenet Threat Labs, which has detailed a new category of threats termed "agentjacking." This attack vector involves embedding malicious instructions within data sources that AI agents commonly process, such as emails or database records. Once processed, these hidden commands can hijack the agent's intended function. Initial testing across over 100 enterprise environments revealed that thousands of organizations are vulnerable to such attacks, with conventional security tools failing to detect them as the agents were operating within their permitted parameters.

Early customer deployments highlight the tangible value of Tenet's solution. One legal sector enterprise, with $1 billion in annual recurring revenue, saw its agent deployments surge from two to over 20 within six months of implementing the platform. During this period, Tenet successfully blocked more than 10 attack attempts, including a critical cross-site scripting vulnerability. In another instance with a Fortune 1000 company, the platform identified a rogue agent responsible for an excessive consumption of AI tokens, costing tens of thousands of dollars over a single weekend. "The attack surface is increasingly incorporating AI agents themselves," noted Poran. "Runtime protection, at the precise moment an agent makes a decision, is the only effective defense."

To fuel its growth, Tenet Security has secured $6 million in seed funding. The round was led by The Westly Group, an early investor in SentinelOne Holdings Inc., with participation from MizMaa Ventures Ltd. This capital infusion will support ongoing product development, expansion of the Tenet Threat Labs, and the build-out of the company's go-to-market operations in North America. The company also benefits from the guidance of notable advisors, including David Schwed, former CISO at Robinhood Markets Inc., and Rick Scott, former CISO at The Bank of New York Mellon Corp.