Salt Security vs. Cequence
Cequence sits in your traffic path. Agentic attacks don’t travel in a straight line.
Cequence grew from bot detection into API security, bringing its inline enforcement model with it. Sitting in the request path means Cequence can only see and block what flows through its Defender proxy. Salt Security operates out-of-band across your full API fabric, correlating behavior across LLM connections, MCP servers, identities, and sequences that no reverse proxy can capture.
API Runtime Protection
Discovery, posture, threat detection
MCP and Agent Layer
Governance beyond gateway proxying
Agentic Security Graph
LLM, MCP, API, identity correlation
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What each platform was built to do
Bot detection and agentic security
are fundamentally different problems
Salt Security: purpose-built agentic security
Behavioral correlation across the full agentic fabric
Salt Security operates entirely out-of-band. No proxy in the request path. No sensors requiring elevated privileges. No tuning scripts. The Agentic Security Graph continuously maps and correlates LLM connections, MCP servers, APIs, identities, and sensitive data — detecting multi-step attack sequences that no inline tool ever sees as a whole.
- Zero latency — fully out-of-band, no reverse proxy required
- Agentic Security Graph across LLM, MCP, and API layers
- Identity-aware multi-step sequence correlation
- No eBPF sensors, no Lua scripting, no policy tuning overhead
- East-west and internal API coverage beyond what inline sees
- Runtime-to-code remediation that closes the loop
- Salt Code governance in repositories before deployment
Cequence: Inline Bot and API Protection
Request-level enforcement through a reverse proxy
Cequence's core product places a Defender reverse proxy in the path of API traffic. It inspects requests inline, enforces policies at the control point, and blocks malicious traffic before it reaches your application. Their AI Gateway extends this model to MCP — adding yet another proxy layer for agent interactions.
- Inline blocking without routing to a separate WAF
- Bot detection and behavioral fingerprinting at the request level
- API discovery and posture management
- Defender proxy adds 8 to 10ms latency per transaction
- Requires eBPF sensor deployments for broader visibility
- Lua-based fingerprint scripting required for mitigation tuning
- No Agentic Security Graph — no LLM, MCP, API sequence correlation
Head-to-head
The agentic capabilities
a proxy model can’t deliver
Cequence enforces at the control point. Salt sees the full picture. These are the capabilities that require behavioral correlation, not inline inspection.
| Feature | Description |  |  |
|---|---|---|---|
| Unified Agentic Discovery | Discovers APIs, MCP servers, and AI-driven assets across external exposure, cloud, code repositories, and runtime. |  |  |
| Agentic Security Graph | Correlates LLMs, MCP servers, APIs, identities, and sensitive data in one action-layer context. | | |
| Salt Code Governance | Governs API and MCP creation in repositories, pull requests, and developer workflows before risky logic reaches production. | | |
| Runtime-to-Code Remediation | Feeds runtime findings back into DevOps workflows and AI coding assistants to fix root causes. | | |
| Agent-Aware Sequence Correlation | Tracks unique agentic identities and multi-step intent across sessions, tools, and services. | | |
| Behavioral Action-Layer Protection | Detects machine-speed business-logic abuse beyond signatures, schemas, or prompt filters. | | |
| Internal & East-West Coverage | Protects internal APIs and downstream service interactions that edge-only and model-only tools miss. | | |
| Action-Layer Data Security | Maps sensitive data in motion across APIs, MCP servers, and agent actions. | | |
| No Reverse Proxy Required | Delivers protection without placing Defender or another reverse proxy in the request path. | | |
| No Privileged Sensor Requirement | Does not rely on privileged eBPF sensor deployments to broaden visibility. | | |
| No Fingerprint Scripting or Mitigation Tuning | Avoids Lua-based fingerprint customization and mitigation-policy tuning to reduce noise. | | |
Why it matters
Inline tools see one request at a time.
Agentic attacks span dozens.
Bot detection was built for high-volume, repeating patterns. Agentic attacks are neither.
Cequence built its reputation detecting bots — high-volume, automated requests hitting the same endpoints repeatedly. AI agents operate differently. They authenticate once, move laterally across services, execute low-frequency actions across days, and chain API calls in sequences that look individually legitimate at every inline inspection point.
Salt's Agentic Security Graph correlates behavior across the full sequence — across LLM connections, MCP server interactions, API calls, and identities. No proxy sees all of that. No fingerprint rule catches it. Behavioral correlation across the entire fabric does.
What Salt catches that Cequence misses
- Multi-step business logic abuse spread across sessions — each request valid, the sequence malicious
- Low-and-slow reconnaissance by AI agents probing APIs at rates that never trigger inline thresholds
- Internal east-west API traffic between microservices triggered by agents after initial authentication
- Shadow and rogue MCP servers created outside sanctioned workflows — invisible to any inline proxy
- Risky API and MCP logic in developer repositories before a single request is ever generated
Salt code
Security before any proxy has traffic to inspect
Cequence's detection model activates when traffic reaches its control point. Salt Code governs API and MCP creation at the repository level — scanning pull requests for risky integrations, shadow APIs, and unsafe agent patterns before they ship. Runtime findings feed back into developer workflows automatically, so the same vulnerability does not reach production twice.
0
ms of latency added —
no proxy in the path
3
layers covered:
LLM, MCP, API
11
capabilities beyond
Cequence's model
100%
east-west and internal
API coverage
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