Proofpoint Strengthens Enterprise AI Security Platform with Acuvity Acquisition
Proofpoint has made a strategic move by acquiring Acuvity, a specialist in AI security and governance. This acquisition is aimed at addressing the increasing risks associated with the enterprise adoption of generative AI and autonomous agents.
Enhancing Security Measures
The integration of Acuvity’s capabilities adds AI-native visibility, governance, and runtime protection to Proofpoint’s platform, which is focused on securing what the company refers to as the “agentic workspace”. This collaboration allows organizations to confidently adopt AI tools and agents while ensuring the necessary governance, visibility, and control to manage potential risks.
Understanding the Risks
The rise of generative AI tools brings significant productivity benefits; however, they also introduce new risks such as:
- Exposure of sensitive data
- Intellectual property loss
- Regulatory breaches
- Prompt-injection attacks
- Unauthorized “shadow AI” deployments
Ryan Kalember, Chief Strategy Officer at Proofpoint, emphasized the importance of this acquisition in expanding the company’s human- and agent-centric security platform to offer comprehensive visibility, governance, and control across the agentic workspace.
Acuvity’s Innovative Solutions
Acuvity’s platform provides crucial visibility into how AI is utilized across various endpoints, browsers, and emerging AI infrastructures, including:
- Model integration frameworks
- Locally deployed AI tools
Additionally, it introduces detection models that help organizations understand the context and intent behind AI interactions, allowing for effective monitoring and governance of user interactions with AI systems and enterprise data.
A Unified Approach to Security
Proofpoint asserts that this acquisition will allow them to provide unified protection that encompasses collaboration security, data security, and AI governance within a single platform. They argue that securing AI requires extending beyond traditional infrastructure protection to consider how AI systems access, process, and act upon sensitive information.
The Need for a New Security Model
Acuvity co-founder and CEO Satyam Sinha pointed out that the shift towards AI-driven workflows necessitates a fundamentally new security model. He stated, “AI is fundamentally reshaping how work gets done, and enterprises are overwhelmed by the pace of AI adoption and the complexity of securing it.” This highlights the pressing need for a security approach that governs how AI thinks, acts, and learns in real time.
Conclusion
As AI becomes increasingly integrated into daily enterprise operations, Proofpoint aims to leverage Acuvity’s technology to enhance its capabilities in helping organizations adopt AI securely while maintaining compliance and protecting sensitive information.
