Salt Security vs. Traceable/Harness
Traceable sees what you instrument. Agents connect to everything you haven’t.
Traceable builds its security picture from distributed tracing agents and OpenTelemetry instrumentation. That means visibility ends at the boundary of what has been instrumented. Shadow APIs, legacy services, external endpoints, and the MCP servers agents connect to in real time all exist outside that boundary. Salt Security covers all of it — no agents, no instrumentation rollouts, no tracing projects required.
Instrumented API Runtime Security
Discovery, posture, behavioral detection
Shadow, Legacy, and Uninstrumented APIs
No tracing agent required
Agentic Security Graph
LLM, MCP, API, identity correlation
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What each platform was built to do
Telemetry-based security and
agentic security solve different problems
Salt Security: purpose-built agentic security
Full coverage without agents, sidecars, or instrumentation
Salt Security requires no tracing agents, platform agents, or instrumentation rollouts. The Agentic Security Graph discovers and correlates LLM connections, MCP servers, APIs, identities, and sensitive data across code, cloud, and runtime — covering shadow APIs, uninstrumented services, and every agentic connection from day one.
- Zero instrumentation required — full coverage from day one
- Agentic Security Graph across LLM, MCP, and API layers
- Shadow, legacy, unauthenticated, and external API coverage
- Identity-aware multi-step sequence correlation
- East-west and internal service coverage without sidecars
- Runtime-to-code remediation loop
- Faster time to value — no instrumentation rollout project
Traceable / Harness: Instrumented API Telemetry
Security built on distributed tracing and OTel agents
Traceable deploys OpenTelemetry-based tracing agents into your services to collect telemetry. Its security analysis is built on that instrumented data. Acquired by Harness in 2025, it is now bundled inside a broader DevOps platform — complicating standalone procurement and making it harder to buy as a pure API security product.
- Deep runtime visibility into instrumented microservices
- Behavioral threat detection across traced API calls
- Sensitive data flow tracking within instrumented traffic
- Blind to any API or service without a tracing agent deployed
- Shadow APIs, legacy systems, and external endpoints are invisible
- High TCO from full traffic ingestion and SaaS processing of sensitive payloads
- No Agentic Security Graph — no LLM, MCP, API sequence correlation
Head-to-head
The agentic capabilities
instrumentation can’t reach
Traceable sees what gets traced. Salt sees what exists. These are the capabilities that require coverage beyond the instrumented traffic boundary.
| 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 Tracing or Platform Agents Required | Delivers full coverage without tracing agents, sidecars, or a platform agent. | | |
| Coverage Beyond Instrumented Traffic | Finds shadow, legacy, unauthenticated, and public-facing APIs without relying on tracing coverage. | | |
| Faster Time to Value Without Instrumentation Rollouts | Delivers value without broad agent deployment or tracing projects. | | |
Why it matters
The APIs agents target are the ones
nobody has instrumented yet
Instrumentation creates a security perimeter. Agents operate outside it.
Traceable’s telemetry model assumes your highest-risk APIs are the ones your engineering teams have gotten around to instrumenting. But the APIs agents connect to in real time — legacy endpoints, shadow integrations, MCP servers spun up without security review, public-facing services never brought inside a tracing program — are exactly the blind spots attackers exploit first.
Salt requires no instrumentation rollout. Coverage starts at discovery across your full environment — external exposure, code repositories, cloud infrastructure, and runtime — not at the boundary of what has tracing agents deployed. And because Salt operates out-of-band, there is no sensitive payload data flowing to a third-party SaaS to generate that coverage.
What Salt catches that Traceable misses
- Shadow APIs, legacy endpoints, and external integrations with no tracing agent deployed
- Multi-step attack sequences that cross instrumented and uninstrumented services
- MCP servers created by developers outside any instrumentation or governance program
- Low-and-slow AI agent reconnaissance operating below tracing sample thresholds
- Risky API and MCP logic in repositories before any service is instrumented or deployed
Salt code
Security before the first tracing agent is ever deployed
Traceable’s security model activates after services are instrumented and generating telemetry. Salt Code governs API and MCP creation at the repository level — scanning pull requests for risky integrations and agentic exposures before they ship. Runtime findings feed back into developer workflows automatically, closing the loop between what gets detected and what gets fixed at the source.
0
tracing agents or
sidecars required
3
layers covered:
LLM, MCP, API
11
capabilities beyond
Traceable’s model
100%
API coverage including
uninstrumented services
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