The 20 Hottest AI Cybersecurity Companies Of 2024: The AI 100 – CRN

The coolest AI cybersecurity companies in 2024 include Crowdstrike, Fortinet, Netskope and Trend Micro.

As cybersecurity vendors have frequently pointed out over the past year and a half, artificial intelligence is far from new to the sphere of cyberdefense. AI and machine learning are, in fact, under the hood with just about every major cybersecurity capability out there—from threat detection, to user authentication and access management, to analysis of network traffic and many other key security functions. In other words, AI for cybersecurity “has been around a long time because it’s absolutely necessary,” said Brian Gagnon, CTO at Uprise Partners, a Portland, Maine-based MSP.

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 making a particularly big splash for providers of security operations tools, where the ability to replace manual processes with natural language queries promises to offer a huge boost to productivity and effectiveness. But many other categories—from email and collaboration security, to cloud and code security, to protecting the use of GenAI itself—are also being enhanced with the help of this still-novel class of technology.

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 securing email and collaboration apps, enabling enhanced detection of anomalous activity. In the realm of GenAI, Abnormal’s CheckGPT tool leverages multiple open-source large language models to determine the likelihood that an email message was created using GenAI.

CrowdStrike

George Kurtz

Co-Founder, President CEO

While CrowdStrike’s Falcon platform has long utilized AI for the detection of threats against endpoints—and more recently for identity and cloud threats—the company has moved into GenAI with the introduction of Charlotte AI. The technology aims to dramatically boost productivity and effectiveness for security analysts.

Darktrace

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

Lane Bess

CEO

Deep Instinct has been among those at the forefront of deploying AI for cyberdefense, with a focus on preventative security. The company’s deep learning algorithms aim to predict attacks such as ransomware, zero-day threats and other previously unknown attacks before they happen.

Fortinet

Ken Xie

Founder, Chairman, CEO

While maintaining over 40 AI-powered offerings overall, Fortinet has moved into generative AI with the recent debut of FortiAI, its GenAI-powered security assistant. Key capabilities of the tool include rapid analysis and interpretation of security incidents as well as generation of investigation 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.

Lacework

Jay Parikh

CEO

Lacework’s cloud security technology, Polygraph, heavily utilizes AI/ML for anomaly detection, with the aim of dramatically reducing alerts and necessary tuning of the system. In the GenAI realm, the company recently debuted Lacework AI Assist, which aims to boost productivity for security teams.

Netskope

Sanjay Beri

CEO

Netskope has made AI/ML capabilities available across its secure access service edge platform, including SkopeAI, providing deep contextual awareness for improved data loss prevention as well as detection of AI-generated threats. Other key applications for the technology include protecting against misuse of GenAI apps such as ChatGPT.

Orca Security

Gil Geron

Co-Founder, CEO

Key AI-powered capabilities on Orca’s cloud security platform include rapid generation of remediation instructions using GenAI. The company has also debuted AI-driven cloud asset search that utilizes large language model technologies to enable question-and-answer functionality around an organization’s assets in the cloud.

Palo Alto Networks

Nikesh Arora

Chairman, CEO

Palo Alto Networks’ long-running focus on leveraging AI/ML in its products has enabled advancements such as Cortex XSIAM (extended security intelligence and automation management), the company’s AI-driven “autonomous” security operations platform. Other key AI-powered product launches have included the recent Darwin 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.

SlashNext

Patrick Harr

Co-Founder, CEO

SlashNext has stood out with its use of AI/ML for protecting against phishing and social engineering on platforms including email, mobile SMS and collaboration apps. The company also utilizes its own in-house large language model to block email-based attacks created using ChatGPT and other GenAI apps.

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.

Tanium

Dan Streetman

CEO

Tanium recently unveiled its Autonomous Endpoint Management platform, which utilizes GenAI to improve productivity and automate more decision-making for IT and security teams, including through prioritizing risks using data on the importance of different assets. Other capabilities bring automation to the generation of workflows around endpoint management.

Tenable

Amit Yoran

CEO

Tenable’s GenAI-powered capabilities include ExposureAI, which provides search capabilities to help users analyze assets and potential exposures with natural language queries, as well as providing guidance around mitigation. The offering also uses generative AI to prioritize response actions based on the highest-risk exposures.

Trend Micro

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 response) that correlates threats across environments and devices. The company’s recently debuted detection and response platform utilizes patented AI-powered technology—dubbed Attack Signal Intelligence—with the goal of arming security operations teams with enhanced prioritization of threats.

Veracode

Brian Roche

CEO

With its Veracode Fix tool, application security vendor Veracode utilizes GenAI to provide remediation suggestions for developers, enabling security flaws to be addressed across both code and open-source dependencies. The company recently added the capability to its Veracode Scan for VS Code offering.

Wiz

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 vendor has since extended its AI-SPM support to include the OpenAI API Platform.

Zscaler

Jay Chaudhry

Founder, Chairman, CEO

With its new secure access service edge offering, Zscaler Zero Trust SASE, the company offers adaptive AI technology to enable continual assessment of risk, Zscaler said. Meanwhile, the company’s data loss prevention product has been updated to thwart potential leakage of data into GenAI apps.