Latest news with #CequenceSecurity
Techday NZ
29-05-2025
- Business
- Techday NZ
Skyfire & Cequence enable secure digital access for AI agents
Skyfire and Cequence Security have announced a partnership aimed at enabling secure, compliant access to digital services for autonomous AI agents. The partnership focuses on integrating Cequence Security's API security and bot management capabilities with Skyfire's payment and identity network, which has been developed specifically for the AI agent economy. Cequence Security reports that it currently secures over 8 billion API interactions daily and protects more than 3 billion user accounts across numerous Fortune 500 and global enterprises. Its existing systems distinguish between malicious and benign bots. With the addition of Skyfire's technology, Cequence's platforms can now identify Skyfire-verified AI agents as trusted automation. The growing role of AI agents as consumers of online services is presenting challenges for both access and security. Many digital platforms require credentials, identity verification, and payment authorisation, which tend to presume the presence of a human user. Without these, AI agents are often blocked from engaging with such services. Skyfire addresses this limitation by providing infrastructure that allows AI agents to present verified credentials and payment methods programmatically. This allows digital services—ranging from paywalled websites to private APIs—to be accessed autonomously and securely, using peer-to-peer connections similar to those used by human users. Cequence's support for the Skyfire identity and payment protocol enables security teams to recognise and authorise verified AI agents while continuing to block untrusted automation that may be associated with scraping, fraud or abuse. Amir Sarhangi, CEO and co-founder of Skyfire, commented, "AI agents aren't just scraping the surface of the web anymore. They're transacting, subscribing, booking, and buying. But they've been locked out by security measures that assume every brand engagement is coming from a user who has fingers and a keyboard. Through our partnership with Cequence, we're enabling an internet where agents are first-class participants in the digital economy, and where identity and security protocols work with them, not against them." Skyfire's protocol assigns AI agents programmable wallets, which can be funded through various sources, including payment cards, ACH, wire transfers, or USDC. These wallets are integrated with identity credentials and payment rules, making them suitable for enterprise use. Cequence Security's bot management platform evaluates a range of behavioural and contextual signals—including new Skyfire-issued identifiers—to enhance trust in automated interactions with business services. The organisations say that this combination addresses the challenge of AI agents accessing valuable digital content behind login walls, anti-bot systems, or compliance requirements that previously blocked non-human users. Securing APIs is evolving beyond simply blocking attacks; there is increased demand to distinguish and enable trusted forms of automation without compromising performance or customer experience. Cequence Security's platform is described as combining API visibility with native enforcement. This approach allows teams to detect abnormal behaviour, interpret intent, and enforce access controls without requiring modifications to their existing applications or deploying additional third-party tools. Where other security approaches may rely on JavaScript, SDKs, or basic risk scores, Cequence employs context-aware detection grounded in traffic patterns and adaptive machine learning to remain ahead of automated threats, while now also authorising verified AI agents. Ameya Talwalkar, CEO of Cequence, said, "Security should never be a barrier to business. Our mission has always been to protect the internet without slowing innovation, and that includes AI agents. With Skyfire, we now have a shared framework to verify and trust additional non-human users at the edge. This unlocks a new era where businesses can safely serve AI agents the same way they serve human users, securely, seamlessly, and at scale." Through this integration, both companies aim to support the emerging needs of the AI agent economy by providing secure, autonomous access to digital services while maintaining compliance and protection against fraud.
Gulf News
02-05-2025
- Gulf News
Is your password an open door to hackers? Why your digital lock needs an upgrade
Dubai: In our increasingly connected world, every device – from smartphones and home security cameras to complex business systems and even medical equipment – acts as a digital door to users' personal information and sensitive data. And the first, most crucial lock on that door? Passwords. As the world marks World Password Day, cybersecurity experts in the UAE are issuing a clear warning: neglecting your digital front door is an open invitation for attackers. While simply 'changing passwords regularly' has been a long-standing advice, the modern threat landscape demands a more sophisticated approach focusing on strength, uniqueness, and smart management. 'Every device that speaks to your network... instantly becomes part of your attack surface,' said Osama Alzoubi, Middle East and Africa Vice President at Phosphorus Cybersecurity. He impressed upon a simple rule: 'If it's connected, it must be protected.' Alzoubi said that many devices, especially the vast and growing fleets of IoT (Internet of Things), are still vulnerable due to default usernames, outdated software, and, perhaps most commonly, reused or weak passwords. These weak spots allow attackers to penetrate networks rapidly. In 2025, with our lives and businesses deeply integrated with digital systems, robust password practices are non-negotiable. Alzoubi uses a relatable analogy: 'Treat passwords like critical supplies: inspect them, change them, and strengthen them regularly, just like changing oil in an engine.' He sees World Password Day as a vital reminder that weak credentials are 'open doors for attackers. Shut them now.' The threat is real Irina Zinovkina, Head of Information Security Analytics Research at Positive Technologies, points to recent data showing that in late 2024 and early 2025, over half (53 per cent) of successful attacks on organisations led directly to the exposure of confidential information. Passwords, she notes, remain a critical defence but are often the 'weakest link.' Experts agree that the traditional password alone isn't enough, especially when it's weak or reused. Mohammad Ismail, Vice President for EMEA at Cequence Security, explains how weak, reused, or generic passwords are easy targets for automated attacks like 'brute force' (guessing many passwords quickly) and 'credential stuffing' (trying leaked username/password combinations from one site on another). 'AI-driven tools have drastically shortened the time needed to crack simple passwords,' Ismail states, putting data at constant risk. A single compromised password can open the door to significant breaches, ransomware, and severe damage. Attackers are no longer just trying their luck manually; they are using automation, machine learning, and AI at an industrial scale to exploit these weaknesses for account takeovers and persistent access within networks. While the concept of forced, frequent password changes without cause is debated and sometimes discouraged by security experts (as it can lead users to choose simpler, easily forgotten passwords), the core principle remains: your passwords must be strong, unique, and managed wisely. So, what are the crucial steps you, as a consumer in the UAE, should take to secure your digital life? Embrace Strength and Uniqueness: Move beyond simple, easily guessable passwords. Think of passphrases – longer, memorable combinations of unrelated words are often much stronger than short, complex ones with confusing symbols. Crucially, never reuse passwords across different accounts. Your other accounts won't be immediately vulnerable if one site is breached. Utilise a Password Manager: Juggling dozens of unique passwords is hard. Password managers are secure applications that generate strong, unique passwords for each site and remember them for you. This is one of the most effective steps you can take. Enable Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA): This is the most critical layer of defence beyond your password. MFA requires a second step to log in, like a code from your phone or a fingerprint scan. Even if an attacker gets your password, they can't get in without this second factor. Enable MFA everywhere it's offered, especially for email, banking, social media, and cloud services. Be Vigilant Against Phishing: Attackers often trick you into revealing your password through fake emails or websites. Be suspicious of unsolicited requests for your login details. Update Weak or Old Passwords: While forced changes might not be ideal, if you know you have old, weak, or reused passwords, update them now to strong, unique ones, preferably using a password manager. Mohammad Ismail of Cequence Security said that while the future might move towards passwordless authentication (like passkeys and biometrics), passwords are still the reality for most accounts today. Therefore, strengthening our current password hygiene is not optional. Protecting yourself in the digital age starts with your password. By making them strong and unique and supporting them with tools like password managers and MFA, you build a stronger defence against the ever-growing wave of cyber threats.
Channel Post MEA
01-05-2025
- Business
- Channel Post MEA
Cequence Security Enhances Unified API Protection Platform For Agentic AI
Cequence Security has announced significant enhancements to its Unified API Protection (UAP) platform to deliver the industry's first comprehensive security solution for agentic AI development, usage, and connectivity. This enhancement empowers organizations to secure every AI agent interaction, regardless of the development framework. By implementing robust guardrails, the solution protects both enterprise-hosted AI applications and external AI APIs, preventing sensitive data exfiltration through business logic abuse and ensuring regulatory compliance. There is no AI without APIs, and the rapid growth of agentic AI applications has amplified concerns about securing sensitive data during their interactions. These AI-driven exchanges can inadvertently expose internal systems, create significant vulnerabilities, and jeopardize valuable data assets. Recognizing this critical challenge, Cequence has expanded its UAP platform, introducing an enhanced security layer to govern interactions between AI agents and backend services specifically. This new layer of security enables customers to detect and prevent AI bots such as ChatGPT from OpenAI and Perplexity from harvesting organizational data. Internal telemetry across Global 2000 deployments shows that the overwhelming majority of AI-related bot traffic, nearly 88%, originates from large language model infrastructure, with most requests obfuscated behind generic or unidentified user agents. Less than 4% of this traffic is transparently attributed to bots like GPTBot or Gemini. Over 97% of it comes from U.S.-based IP addresses, highlighting the concentration of risk in North American enterprises. Cequence's ability to detect and govern this traffic in real time, despite the lack of clear identifiers, reinforces the platform's unmatched readiness for securing agentic AI in the wild. Key enhancements to Cequence's UAP platform include: Block unauthorized AI data harvesting: Understanding that external AI often seeks to learn by broadly collecting data without obtaining permission, Cequence provides organizations with the critical capability to manage which AI, if any, can interact with their proprietary information. Understanding that external AI often seeks to learn by broadly collecting data without obtaining permission, Cequence provides organizations with the critical capability to manage which AI, if any, can interact with their proprietary information. Detect and prevent sensitive data exposure: Empowers organizations to effectively detect and prevent sensitive data exposure across all forms of agentic AI. This includes safeguarding against external AI harvesting attempts and securing data within internal AI applications. The platform's intelligent analysis automatically differentiates between legitimate data access during normal application usage and anomalous activities signaling sensitive data exfiltration, ensuring comprehensive protection against AI-related data loss. Empowers organizations to effectively detect and prevent sensitive data exposure across all forms of agentic AI. This includes safeguarding against external AI harvesting attempts and securing data within internal AI applications. The platform's intelligent analysis automatically differentiates between legitimate data access during normal application usage and anomalous activities signaling sensitive data exfiltration, ensuring comprehensive protection against AI-related data loss. Discover and manage shadow AI: Automatically discovers and classifies APIs from agentic AI tools like Microsoft Copilot and Salesforce Agentforce, presenting a unified view alongside customers' internal and third-party APIs. This comprehensive visibility empowers organizations to easily manage these interactions and effectively detect and block sensitive data leaks, whether from external AI harvesting or internal AI usage. Automatically discovers and classifies APIs from agentic AI tools like Microsoft Copilot and Salesforce Agentforce, presenting a unified view alongside customers' internal and third-party APIs. This comprehensive visibility empowers organizations to easily manage these interactions and effectively detect and block sensitive data leaks, whether from external AI harvesting or internal AI usage. Seamless integration: Integrates easily into DevOps frameworks for discovering internal AI applications and generates OpenAPI specifications that detail API schemas and security mechanisms, including strong authentication and security policies. Cequence delivers powerful protection without relying on third-party tools, while seamlessly integrating with the customer's existing cybersecurity ecosystem. This simplifies management and security enforcement. Gartner predicts that by 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI, up from less than 1% in 2024, enabling 15% of day-to-day work decisions to be made autonomously. 'We've taken immediate action to extend our market-leading API security and bot management capabilities,' said Ameya Talwalkar, CEO of Cequence. 'Agentic AI introduces a new layer of complexity, where every agent behaves like a bidirectional API. That's our wheelhouse. Our platform helps organizations embrace innovation at scale without sacrificing governance, compliance, or control.' These extended capabilities will be generally available in June. 0 0
Zawya
01-05-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Inspira and Cequence Security join forces to strengthen API security and bot defense worldwide
Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Inspira Enterprise, Inc. ('Inspira'), a global cybersecurity services leader, today announced a strategic partnership with Cequence Security, a pioneer in API security and bot management. With this collaboration, Inspira and Cequence will help organizations globally defend against the full spectrum of API based threats, including automated threats, ranging from malicious bots to business logic abuse, while maintaining frictionless digital experiences. The cybersecurity landscape will be fortified by pairing Inspira's end-to-end cybersecurity services across advisory, transformation, and operations, and a range of data analytics solutions, with Cequence's innovative Unified API Protection (UAP) platform. APIs have become the backbone of modern digital transformation, powering everything from mobile apps to customer portals. But with that innovation comes risk. Security teams face significant challenges in protecting API applications, especially with their rapid deployment across multiple cloud environments. Unmanaged and unprotected APIs often expose critical vulnerabilities, while inconsistent security postures across the application landscape add further complexity and risk. Cequence Security's UAP platform helps organizations gain visibility into their API traffic, ensure API compliance, test for security gaps, and stop automated threats such as credential stuffing, scraping, and fake account creation. While doing so, the Platform also ensures that it does not block good bots, alter development cycles, or disrupt the business or user experience. 'Our customers are under pressure to secure their APIs, manage risk, and meet growing compliance demands across geographies,' said Geetanjali Sethi, President – Strategy and Growth at Inspira. 'By partnering with Cequence, we're expanding our portfolio to offer API security and bot protection as a fully managed service, combining cutting-edge technology with our global expertise and 24/7 operational support.' Cequence is proud to join Inspira's trusted partner ecosystem, helping them bring outcome-driven API protection and bot mitigation to customers worldwide. Customers can now detect and stop sophisticated API attacks, enhance API governance and security testing, improve visibility and response time, secure APIs during open banking transitions, and meet stringent data sovereignty requirements. 'This partnership is rooted in delivering real outcomes,' said Arun Gowda, VP of Business Development at Cequence Security. 'With Cequence, customers already get a world-class platform to secure their APIs and defend against automated attacks. Now, paired with Inspira's global reach and service capabilities, organizations can consume the platform as a managed service, enabling faster implementation, management, and threat monitoring.' As part of the partnership, Inspira is augmenting its cybersecurity portfolio with industry-leading API security and bot management capabilities, offering not only the Cequence Platform but also the managed security services wrapped around it. Inspira will provide expert deployment, advisory support, ongoing monitoring, and full lifecycle threat management to help customers adopt and operate the solution with ease. The joint offering delivers a full-stack approach to API protection and bot defense, backed by Inspira's white-glove service model and global Cyber Fusion Centers. About Inspira Enterprise Inspira Enterprise is a global Cybersecurity, Data Analytics, and Artificial Intelligence services provider with a presence in North America, ASEAN, the Middle East, India, and Africa. It offers a wide range of services to a host of industries like Banking, Financial Services and Insurance (BFSI), Healthcare, Public Sector, Manufacturing, Information technology-enabled services (ITeS), eCommerce, and others. Inspira believes in delivering adaptive, intelligent, industry and customer-centric solutions for the resilient businesses of tomorrow. Inspira is also a NVIDIA partner specializing in the planning, design, implementation, and project management of solutions that include NVIDIA products and technologies to address customers' business and technology needs. Over the years, Inspira has successfully designed and delivered complex transformational projects to over 250+ customers, including the Government, PSUs, BFSI, and Enterprise customers, with a team of over 1600 professionals. For more information, please visit About Cequence Security Cequence is a pioneer in API security and bot management, protecting the applications and APIs that organizations depend on from cyberattacks, business logic abuse, and fraud. Its Unified API Protection platform brings together discovery, compliance, and protection capabilities to deliver real-time defense against advanced threats. Requiring no code changes or app instrumentation, Cequence demonstrates value in minutes and scales to support the world's largest private and public sector organizations—safeguarding more than 8 billion API interactions daily and over 3 billion user accounts. Learn more at Media Contact cequence@
Zawya
30-04-2025
- Business
- Zawya
Cequence Security unveils industry-first security layer to govern and protect agentic AI
Dubai, United Arab Emirates — Cequence Security, a leader in API security and bot management, today announced significant enhancements to its Unified API Protection (UAP) platform to deliver the industry's first comprehensive security solution for agentic AI development, usage, and connectivity. This enhancement empowers organizations to secure every AI agent interaction, regardless of the development framework. By implementing robust guardrails, the solution protects both enterprise-hosted AI applications and external AI APIs, preventing sensitive data exfiltration through business logic abuse and ensuring regulatory compliance. There is no AI without APIs, and the rapid growth of agentic AI applications has amplified concerns about securing sensitive data during their interactions. These AI-driven exchanges can inadvertently expose internal systems, create significant vulnerabilities, and jeopardize valuable data assets. Recognizing this critical challenge, Cequence has expanded its UAP platform, introducing an enhanced security layer to govern interactions between AI agents and backend services specifically. This new layer of security enables customers to detect and prevent AI bots such as ChatGPT from OpenAI and Perplexity from harvesting organizational data. Internal telemetry across Global 2000 deployments shows that the overwhelming majority of AI-related bot traffic, nearly 88%, originates from large language model infrastructure, with most requests obfuscated behind generic or unidentified user agents. Less than 4% of this traffic is transparently attributed to bots like GPTBot or Gemini. Over 97% of it comes from U.S.-based IP addresses, highlighting the concentration of risk in North American enterprises. Cequence's ability to detect and govern this traffic in real time, despite the lack of clear identifiers, reinforces the platform's unmatched readiness for securing agentic AI in the wild. Key enhancements to Cequence's UAP platform include: Block unauthorized AI data harvesting: Understanding that external AI often seeks to learn by broadly collecting data without obtaining permission, Cequence provides organizations with the critical capability to manage which AI, if any, can interact with their proprietary information. Detect and prevent sensitive data exposure: Empowers organizations to effectively detect and prevent sensitive data exposure across all forms of agentic AI. This includes safeguarding against external AI harvesting attempts and securing data within internal AI applications. The platform's intelligent analysis automatically differentiates between legitimate data access during normal application usage and anomalous activities signaling sensitive data exfiltration, ensuring comprehensive protection against AI-related data loss. Discover and manage shadow AI: Automatically discovers and classifies APIs from agentic AI tools like Microsoft Copilot and Salesforce Agentforce, presenting a unified view alongside customers' internal and third-party APIs. This comprehensive visibility empowers organizations to easily manage these interactions and effectively detect and block sensitive data leaks, whether from external AI harvesting or internal AI usage. Seamless integration: Integrates easily into DevOps frameworks for discovering internal AI applications and generates OpenAPI specifications that detail API schemas and security mechanisms, including strong authentication and security policies. Cequence delivers powerful protection without relying on third-party tools, while seamlessly integrating with the customer's existing cybersecurity ecosystem. This simplifies management and security enforcement. "Gartner® predicts that by 2028, 33% of enterprise software applications will include agentic AI, up from less than 1% in 2024, enabling 15% of day-to-day work decisions to be made autonomously."* "We've taken immediate action to extend our market-leading API security and bot management capabilities," said Ameya Talwalkar, CEO of Cequence. 'Agentic AI introduces a new layer of complexity, where every agent behaves like a bidirectional API. That's our wheelhouse. Our platform helps organizations embrace innovation at scale without sacrificing governance, compliance, or control." These extended capabilities will be generally available in June. Additional Resources: Book a meeting with Cequence at RSAC Learn more about the Cequence Unified API Protection platform. Follow us on LinkedIn and *Gartner Articles, Intelligent Agents in AI Really Can Work Alone. Here's How., October 2024. GARTNER is a registered trademark and service mark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates in the U.S. and internationally and is used herein with permission. All rights reserved. About Cequence Security Cequence is a pioneer in API security and bot management, protecting the applications and APIs that organizations depend on from attacks, business logic abuse, and fraud. Our unique Unified API Protection platform unites discovery, compliance, and protection capabilities, providing unmatched real-time security in the face of sophisticated threats. Demonstrating value in minutes rather than days or weeks, Cequence offers a flexible deployment model that requires no app instrumentation or modification. Cequence solutions scale to meet the needs of the largest and most demanding private and public sector organizations, protecting more than 8 billion daily API interactions and 3 billion user accounts. To learn more, visit Media Contact
