SandboxAQ launches AQtive Guard to secure AI agent identities

SandboxAQ has announced the launch of AQtive Guard, a platform designed to manage and secure Non-Human Identities (NHIs) and cryptographic assets used by AI agents across enterprise environments.

The expansion of AI agents within business operations has created new vulnerabilities, with billions of such agents now operating within enterprise networks.

These developments have led to increased risks posed by intelligent, adaptive cyber threats capable of evading existing security measures and exploiting system weaknesses more rapidly than previous technology could respond.

AQtive Guard comprises two core components: the Discover module, which inventories NHIs and cryptographic assets including keys, certificates, algorithms, and libraries; and the Protect module, which enables automated remediation and policy enforcement such as credential rotation and certificate renewal. These features are designed to support compliance and help organisations meet regulatory requirements.

The platform harnesses SandboxAQ's Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) to provide what the company describes as enhanced visibility, control, and remediation capabilities. This approach aims to address challenges associated with machine-to-machine communication security, increasing regulatory pressures, and the implementation of new NIST security standards.

In conjunction with the launch, SandboxAQ announced that AQtive Guard will integrate with platforms operated by CrowdStrike and Palo Alto Networks.

The integration with the CrowdStrike Falcon cybersecurity suite allows AQtive Guard to import data from CrowdStrike endpoints, providing customers with insight into their NHI and cryptographic inventories and vulnerabilities. "One-click ingestion translates to value from the first hour of use. AQtive Guard can then remediate the vulnerabilities as they are identified," the company stated.

AQtive Guard also gains interoperability with Palo Alto Networks, ingesting firewall logs to improve visibility into network security posture and vulnerability detection, while supporting organisational compliance requirements.

Speaking about the scale of the issue, Jack Hidary, Chief Executive Officer of SandboxAQ, said: "There will be more than one billion AI agents with significant autonomous power in the next few years."

"Enterprises are giving AI agents a vastly increased range of capabilities to impact customers and real-world assets. This creates a dangerous attack surface for adversaries. AQtive Guard's Discover and Protect modules address this urgent issue."

Marc Manzano, General Manager of Cybersecurity at SandboxAQ, emphasised the importance of the platform's real-time inventory and remediation capabilities: "As organisations accelerate AI adoption and the use of agents and machine-to-machine communication across all business domains and functions, maintaining a real-time, accurate inventory of NHIs and cryptographic assets is an essential cybersecurity practice."

"Being able to automatically remediate vulnerabilities and policy violations identified is crucial to decrease time to mitigation and prevent potential breaches within the first day of use of our software."

The core functions of AQtive Guard include: vulnerability detection and continuous inventory by integrating data from different sources and existing cybersecurity solutions, AI-powered insights for prioritisation and risk analysis, and automated lifecycle management of identities and cryptographic keys to reduce manual intervention and mitigate risks from outdated or compromised secrets.

The platform also features an integrated GenAI assistant, which supports user compliance with standards and regulatory requirements.

Additionally, the platform provides remediation recommendations specific to compliance and NIST standards, a query engine with pre-built and custom rulesets, and reporting tools intended to assist organisations in demonstrating compliance and accelerating migration to new NIST frameworks.

AQtive Guard is available as a cloud-delivered platform and aims to offer rapid deployment and immediate impact for enterprise clients seeking to secure their cryptographic assets and NHIs.