As organizations evolve from simple chatbots to autonomous AI agents capable of executing actions, they face a trust gap. Giving AI the ability to perform tasks independently introduces new risks related to unauthorized actions, data exposure, and out-of-control costs.
In order to provide greater security to the environment, Palo Alto Networks has announced the closing of the acquisition of Portkey, a pioneer company in AI Gateways. This acquisition cements the AI Gateway as a mission-critical control layer for enterprises, enabling organizations to accelerate AI innovation with confidence.
Monitor, orchestrate and govern agents
To address this challenge, an AI Gateway acts as the central nervous system for all AI traffic. It provides essential capabilities to monitor, orchestrate, and govern agent interactions, helping to ensure that each request is routed to the most appropriate model for the task, monitoring token usage to help prevent runaway costs, and providing a critical layer of runtime protection to help stop malicious or unwanted AI behavior in real time.
Portkey’s unique architecture has been specifically designed to secure large-scale AI deployments, thanks to its ability to process trillions of tokens, and its AI Gateway can be deployed with minimal effort. By making Portkey the primary AI Gateway for Prisma AIRS, the comprehensive AI security platform, Palo Alto Networks will be able to offer a solution that natively integrates:
- AI Runtime Security – Acting as the critical AI Gateway for Prisma AIRS and inspecting all AI traffic at runtime to help detect and stop novel agent-based threats before they can impact the business.
- Identity security for agents using Idira: authenticating every interaction between agents to prevent unauthorized use of tools and lateral movements, helping to ensure that all agents are treated as privileged users.
- AI Observability through Chronosphere: Providing deep technical telemetry to help ensure AI workloads run reliably at production scale.
Lee Klarich, Chief Product & Technology Officer at Palo Alto Networks, said: “AI is evolving so quickly that organizations often feel forced to choose between two failing strategies: rushing to integrate a scattered set of specific solutions to keep up, or lagging behind while waiting for legacy platforms to catch up. We are breaking that cycle. Palo Alto Networks offers a platform that stays ahead through a deliberate combination of organic innovation and strategic acquisitions. By converting Portkey is a critical component of the comprehensive Prisma AIRS platform, we take on the integration effort so our customers don’t have to, allowing them to adopt the most advanced AI capabilities quickly and confidently.”
Acquisition cements AI Gateway as a mission-critical control layer for enterprises
For his part, Rohit Agarwal, CEO and co-founder of Portkey, points out that “we are joining forces with Palo Alto Networks to close the trust gap that prevents AI from reaching its full potential. Our mission is to help companies move forward without fear. By combining our gateway with Palo Alto Networks’ AI security platform, we are helping organizations scale from experimental pilots to core enterprise operations without compromising security or reliability.
