Salt Security vs. Onyx Security
Onyx governs agents before they act. The risk lives in what happens after.
Onyx Security is an AI control plane that supervises agent behavior at the orchestration layer, intercepting actions before they reach downstream systems. Salt Security secures those downstream systems — the APIs, MCP servers, and data infrastructure where agents actually execute. Governing the agent does not protect the environment it operates in.
AI Agent Governance and Observability
Discovery, policy enforcement, AI control
MCP and API Layer — No Inline Gateway
Protection without proxying all traffic
Downstream API Business Logic Protection
Behavioral detection in the action layer
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What each platform was built to do
An AI control plane and agentic security
operate at different layers
Salt Security: purpose-built agentic security
Eight years of API security, applied to the full agentic fabric
Salt Security was built for the layer Onyx's control plane stops before: the APIs, MCP servers, identities, and downstream services where agents execute actions and access data. The Agentic Security Graph maps and correlates the full environment out-of-band — no inline gateway, no proxy dependency, and full coverage of the infrastructure Onyx's supervisory layer never reaches.
- Agentic Security Graph across LLM, MCP, API, and identity layers
- Downstream API and action-layer behavioral detection
- No inline MCP gateway required — fully out-of-band
- Identity-aware multi-step sequence correlation
- Full API fabric coverage including shadow, internal, and east-west
- Runtime-to-code remediation loop
- Eight years of production API security research behind every detection
Onyx Security: AI Control Plane
Supervising agents at the orchestration layer
Launched in March 2026, Onyx Security positions its Guardian Agent as a supervisory control plane that intercepts agent actions before they reach downstream systems — blocking unsafe behavior, requiring human approval, or redirecting agents in real time. Coverage focuses on what agents do at the AI orchestration layer, not on the APIs and infrastructure where their actions execute.
- AI agent discovery across SaaS, cloud, endpoints, and code
- Supervisory Guardian Agent that can block or redirect unsafe actions
- Natural language policy controls for non-technical stakeholders
- Inline MCP gateway adds latency and a proxy dependency
- No visibility into downstream API behavior after agent actions execute
- No behavioral detection across multi-step API sequences
- No Agentic Security Graph across LLM, MCP, API, and identity layers
Head-to-head
The agentic capabilities
a control plane can’t cover
Onyx Security governs what agents are permitted to do. Salt Security detects what agents actually do — and what happens in the infrastructure after. These are the capabilities that require action-layer coverage, not orchestration-layer supervision.
| 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 Inline MCP Gateway Required | Delivers protection without proxying all MCP traffic through an inline gateway. | | |
| More Than an AI Control Plane | Secures the APIs where agents take action, not only AI observability, governance, orchestration, and ROI. | | |
| Downstream API Business Logic Protection | Detects abuse in the backing services and APIs behind the agent, not just in the AI control plane. | | |
Why it matters
Governing agents before they act
does not secure the systems they act on
The attack surface lives downstream from where Onyx Security governs
Onyx Security’s Guardian Agent intercepts agent actions before they reach downstream systems. That architecture is well-suited for preventing agents from doing things they should not be authorized to do. What it cannot address is what happens when agents do things they are authorized to do — and those actions are exploited to abuse business logic, exfiltrate data, or chain attacks across APIs at machine speed.
Salt Security operates out-of-band across the full API fabric and action layer. Eight years of production API security research means Salt's behavioral models understand how agentic attacks actually unfold — not just how they look to a supervisory agent deciding whether to permit or block a single request.
What Salt detects that Onyx Security cannot reach
- Business logic abuse executed through authorized agent actions that pass every control-plane check
- Multi-step attack sequences spread across APIs, sessions, and downstream services beyond the orchestration layer
- East-west internal API traffic triggered by agentic actions after initial authorization
- Shadow APIs, rogue MCP servers, and undocumented integrations that exist outside any governance inventory
- Risky API and MCP logic built into code repositories before any agent or control plane ever interacts with it
Salt code
Security before any control plane has agents to supervise
Onyx Security governs agents after they are deployed. Salt Code secures the environment they deploy into — scanning repositories and pull requests for risky API integrations, shadow MCP servers, and dangerous agentic patterns before they ship. Runtime findings feed back into developer workflows automatically, so the underlying vulnerabilities are fixed, not just governed around.
8
years of production
API security research
3
layers covered:
LLM, MCP, API
11
capabilities beyond
Onyx's control plane
0
inline MCP gateways
required
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