Straiker Named an EMA Vendor Vision 2026 Visionary at RSAC
As autonomous AI agents introduce risks that legacy security tools weren't built to handle, Straiker has been named an EMA Vendor Vision 2026 Visionary at RSAC for its ground-up approach to agentic security.
When Ankur and Sreenath founded Straiker, they made a deliberate choice: build for agentic AI from the ground up. Today, that bet is paying off in a way that means a lot to us. Straiker has been named one of Enterprise Management Associates' (EMA) ten "must-see" vendors in its fifth annual Vendor Vision report for the 2026 RSA Conference in San Francisco.
What makes this recognition meaningful is how EMA arrives at its list. Vendor Vision isn't a pay-to-play award. EMA's Information Security analysts survey the full exhibitor landscape — more than 600 companies at RSAC — and hand-select ten that represent genuine innovation worth an attendee's time. Being chosen alongside companies like AWS, SailPoint, and Proofpoint is a real signal, and validation from independent analysts matters enormously.
EMA's 2026 theme centers on securing the autonomous enterprise against machine-speed threats. It's the exact problem Straiker was purpose-built to solve.
As organizations deploy autonomous AI agents, they face risks that traditional security tools weren't designed to handle: prompt injection, tool manipulation, excessive autonomy, and non-deterministic behavior that moves faster than any human team can track. Legacy vendors use deterministic tools to secure human logins. Straiker secures the AI agents themselves, and the agents they're building — and that distinction is the entire reason we exist.
At the core of our approach are Ascend AI and Defend AI, which work together in a closed loop. Ascend AI acts as a continuous autonomous red teamer, simulating language-augmented vulnerabilities (what we call LAVA) to surface weaknesses before attackers do. Defend AI runs real-time guardrails using a "Medley of Experts" (MoE) architecture, blocking threats at subsecond latency. Using eBPF sensors and AI proxies, we get deep context across prompts, models, and infrastructure. The result is protection that spans the entire AI stack without slowing down development.
EMA's analysts specifically highlighted something we're especially proud of: Chain of Threat Forensics. We believe Straiker is the first to offer full reconstruction of an AI agent's reasoning path during a security event, pinpointing the specific prompt or API call that introduced risk. That forensic visibility isn't just useful after an incident; it's what gives security teams the confidence to run high-stakes autonomous agents in production.
In EMA's words: "Straiker fills a critical 2026 gap: governing autonomous AI agents... By providing deep forensic visibility into agent 'thought' processes, Straiker gives CISOs the confidence to deploy high-stakes autonomous agents in production."
That reflects what we hear from CISOs who are grappling with AI governance right now and can't afford to wait for the rest of the industry to catch up. Building for this moment from day one is what makes this recognition feel earned.
If you're heading to RSAC, come find us at Early Stage Expo ESE-10. We'd love to show you what AI-native security looks like in practice. And if you want to read the full EMA report, download it here.
The agentic era is here. Let's make sure it's a secure one.
When Ankur and Sreenath founded Straiker, they made a deliberate choice: build for agentic AI from the ground up. Today, that bet is paying off in a way that means a lot to us. Straiker has been named one of Enterprise Management Associates' (EMA) ten "must-see" vendors in its fifth annual Vendor Vision report for the 2026 RSA Conference in San Francisco.
What makes this recognition meaningful is how EMA arrives at its list. Vendor Vision isn't a pay-to-play award. EMA's Information Security analysts survey the full exhibitor landscape — more than 600 companies at RSAC — and hand-select ten that represent genuine innovation worth an attendee's time. Being chosen alongside companies like AWS, SailPoint, and Proofpoint is a real signal, and validation from independent analysts matters enormously.
EMA's 2026 theme centers on securing the autonomous enterprise against machine-speed threats. It's the exact problem Straiker was purpose-built to solve.
As organizations deploy autonomous AI agents, they face risks that traditional security tools weren't designed to handle: prompt injection, tool manipulation, excessive autonomy, and non-deterministic behavior that moves faster than any human team can track. Legacy vendors use deterministic tools to secure human logins. Straiker secures the AI agents themselves, and the agents they're building — and that distinction is the entire reason we exist.
At the core of our approach are Ascend AI and Defend AI, which work together in a closed loop. Ascend AI acts as a continuous autonomous red teamer, simulating language-augmented vulnerabilities (what we call LAVA) to surface weaknesses before attackers do. Defend AI runs real-time guardrails using a "Medley of Experts" (MoE) architecture, blocking threats at subsecond latency. Using eBPF sensors and AI proxies, we get deep context across prompts, models, and infrastructure. The result is protection that spans the entire AI stack without slowing down development.
EMA's analysts specifically highlighted something we're especially proud of: Chain of Threat Forensics. We believe Straiker is the first to offer full reconstruction of an AI agent's reasoning path during a security event, pinpointing the specific prompt or API call that introduced risk. That forensic visibility isn't just useful after an incident; it's what gives security teams the confidence to run high-stakes autonomous agents in production.
In EMA's words: "Straiker fills a critical 2026 gap: governing autonomous AI agents... By providing deep forensic visibility into agent 'thought' processes, Straiker gives CISOs the confidence to deploy high-stakes autonomous agents in production."
That reflects what we hear from CISOs who are grappling with AI governance right now and can't afford to wait for the rest of the industry to catch up. Building for this moment from day one is what makes this recognition feel earned.
If you're heading to RSAC, come find us at Early Stage Expo ESE-10. We'd love to show you what AI-native security looks like in practice. And if you want to read the full EMA report, download it here.
The agentic era is here. Let's make sure it's a secure one.
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