eSentire acquires AI security startup for Atlas AIDR

eSentire has acquired a stealth-mode AI security startup, adding a new module called Atlas AIDR to its Atlas Platform.

Atlas AIDR sits within Atlas Detect and is designed to give security teams a real-time record of AI activity across an organisation's systems. It logs full conversation timelines, tool calls and their inputs and outputs, as well as security events, and links that activity to a user, team and workstation.

The move reflects growing concern about how employees and software agents use AI tools at work. Citing McKinsey figures, eSentire said 76% of employees now use AI at work, up from 30% two years earlier.

Many organisations still lack a clear audit trail for AI use, including what data is accessed, where it goes and how much the activity costs. Atlas AIDR is intended to address that gap by combining monitoring, policy enforcement and financial tracking in a single module.

For browser-based AI use, such as staff using web assistants, Atlas can use existing telemetry to provide visibility into that activity. This allows security teams to identify and inventory shadow AI use, while Atlas AIDR applies more direct controls at the desktop layer.

What it tracks

The module records user sessions and maintains an inventory of agents, models, providers, MCP servers and tools in use. It also tracks token consumption, latency and costs at the level of individual requests, with roll-ups by user, team and model.

Atlas AIDR also includes controls intended to act during live AI use. These include redacting personally identifiable information before it reaches a model, screening for prompt injection attempts and enforcing custom business rules to block policy breaches.

Another focus is what eSentire describes as agent supply chain governance. The product provides oversight of external MCP servers and tools called by autonomous agents, including which users rely on them and when a server's description or behaviour changes.

The acquisition comes during a broader product expansion at eSentire. Earlier this year, the company introduced Atlas Preempt for autonomous penetration testing and attack path validation, followed by Atlas Response for email security and patch management.

James C. Foster, Chief Executive Officer of eSentire, said the company moved quickly to integrate the acquired technology. "Every enterprise is racing to put AI to work, and almost none of them can tell you what their AI agents are doing with their proprietary data, or what they cost," Foster said. "That is a critical accountability and security gap and is exactly the kind of problem eSentire solves for our customers every day. We acquired the security startup team and product and shipped their technology inside Atlas in weeks. That is the difference between a platform and a portfolio: when we buy something, our customers get it. And we do it without forcing anyone to rip and replace - Atlas AIDR can also work with the AI providers and security tools our customers have already chosen. This positions eSentire to lead in securing the AI-driven vendor-independent enterprise rather than react to it."

That emphasis on working alongside existing systems appears aimed at customers that have already invested in security and AI software from other suppliers. eSentire said the Atlas Platform is vendor-agnostic and that Atlas AIDR is built to complement endpoint, SIEM and other security tools already in place.

Governance pressure

Security teams are under growing pressure to show not only that AI use is monitored, but that it can be governed in a way that stands up to internal reviews and external scrutiny. That need is becoming more pressing as companies allow staff and autonomous agents to connect models to external tools and data sources.

Nim Nadarajah, Chief Information Security Officer and Managing Partner at CriticalMatrix, an eSentire partner, said customers want practical controls rather than policy statements alone. "You can delegate work to AI. You can't delegate accountability," Nadarajah said. "Our clients need more than an AI policy - they need a clear record of what their agents are accessing and the ability to enforce boundaries. Atlas AIDR puts that control into practice, because governance has to work in the business, not just look good in a board report."

Atlas AIDR is generally available to customers and partners through the Atlas Platform. eSentire says it serves more than 2,000 organisations across more than 80 countries and protects more than two million endpoints.