US tech giant Cisco buys Israeli AI cyber startup to protect digital workforce |
US tech giant Cisco Systems Inc., has agreed to buy Israeli cybersecurity startup Astrix Security to bolster its security arsenal to address emerging threats tied to the rapid use of autonomous AI agents, the companies said Tuesday.
No financial details were provided, but Hebrew media reports estimated the deal value between $300 million to $400 million.
Founded in 2021 by Alon Jackson, CEO, and Idan Gour, CTO – both veterans of Israel’s vaunted IDF intelligence unit 8200 – Tel Aviv-based Astrix is the developer of a software platform which addresses the security gap created by AI agents or digital employees gaining unrestricted access to enterprise systems without governance, oversight, or identity management.
“We founded Astrix with a clear conviction: the identities and credentials powering modern enterprise systems — API keys, service accounts, OAuth tokens — were dangerously under-secured,” said Jackson. “These non-human identities were everywhere, growing fast, and largely invisible to security teams.”
“We built Astrix because we believed this was one of the most important unsolved problems in enterprise security,” said Jackson.
The startup’s platform is designed to map all AI agents in a company’s network. The platform tracks the tools AI agents deploy to automate workloads, including the use of credentials to gain access to sensitive data and execute tasks across a sprawling web of........