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Cisco acquires Astrix Security to expand AI agent and non-human identity protection

Cisco is acquiring Astrix Security to manage AI agent access and non-human identities like API keys and OAuth tokens. In most organizations, non-human identities outnumber human ones 100-to-1 but remain largely invisible to security teams.

2 min read
Management

Cisco Acquires Astrix Security to Manage AI Agent Access

Cisco announced plans to acquire Astrix Security to address a critical gap in enterprise security: controlling AI agents and non-human identities like API keys, service accounts, and OAuth tokens. The company did not disclose the acquisition price.

The move reflects a widening security problem. According to Cisco's AI Readiness Index, only 24% of organizations can control agent actions with proper guardrails and live monitoring. Just 31% feel equipped to secure their agent AI systems.

Astrix Security, founded five years ago, built a platform to discover, manage, and secure AI agents and non-human identities across entire organizations. The company maintains real-time inventory of all AI agents, machine-to-machine connections, and associated risks.

What Managers Need to Know

Cisco plans to integrate Astrix's capabilities into three product lines: Identity Intelligence, Secure Access, and Duo Identity and Access Management. This means organizations using Cisco's security tools will gain visibility into AI agent activity across their infrastructure.

The integration addresses a scale problem. Non-human identities outnumber human identities 100-to-1 in most organizations, yet remain largely invisible to security teams.

Astrix's platform handles three core functions:

  • Discovery and governance - mapping all agentic activity and reducing attack surfaces
  • Access and lifecycle management - provisioning and decommissioning AI agents
  • Threat detection and response - identifying compromised credentials and unauthorized agent actions

Security teams will be able to feed agent activity data into Splunk or other security information and event management systems, creating a unified view of agent behavior across the organization.

Part of a Broader Strategy

This acquisition follows Cisco's purchase of AI observability firm Galileo Technologies in April. Galileo's platform monitors multi-agent system development and adds guardrails for AI agent protection during the development phase.

Together, the two acquisitions address agent security across the full lifecycle: from development through production monitoring and access control.

For managers overseeing security and AI adoption, the acquisitions signal where enterprise security vendors are investing resources. The focus on non-human identities reflects a practical reality: as organizations deploy more AI agents, traditional identity and access management tools fall short.

Learn more about AI for Management and how security strategy fits into broader organizational AI adoption plans.

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