Vanta + Pillar: The System of Runtime Action for AI Governance

Agents have gone from answering questions to pushing code, writing customer records, and acting across business systems on their own. Security leaders are left with an impossible mandate: accelerate AI adoption while protecting the enterprise from the risk it carries. 

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Legacy compliance systems were built to spot-check risk at human speed. But an agent doesn’t wait for the quarterly review—it acts now, and it may not act the same way twice. You cannot govern a live agent with a PDF. To safely embrace AI, your governance program must have the power to see and act in real time.

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That’s why Vanta has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Pillar Security—a leading runtime security platform. Together, we are building the system of runtime action for AI governance.

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Closing the gap between GRC and AI security

Security and GRC teams are both asked to manage AI risk, but they operate from different systems and different priorities.

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AI security point solutions detect threats but lack the business context to prioritize effectively. Traditional GRC systems hold business context in policies and controls that can become disconnected from reality.

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Vanta and Pillar will close that gap by connecting runtime protection and adversarial testing to the Vanta Trust Graph—a live map of your trust program powered by over 400 integrations. Together, we will turn governance requirements into enforceable boundaries grounded in the context of your business.

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If an agent attempts an unauthorized action—like accessing restricted data or sharing sensitive financial information in an unapproved channel—the platform will block it. Then the Vanta Agent will alert owners and generate an audit trail showing exactly which protections were enforced.

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"Active is too slow in the age of AI. Agents move through the enterprise at machine speed, and governance that only documents risk after the fact can’t keep up. CISOs need controls that sit in the path and act in real time. Moves like this one show the market shifting from AI governance on paper to governance at runtime.” 

- Phil Harris, Research Director, IDC

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Protect the full AI agent lifecycle

Safe AI adoption means seeing what’s actually running, red teaming your environment, and enforcing boundaries for agents. Pillar’s capabilities, integrated into Vanta, will cover that end to end:

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• AI Inventory (January 2027): Automatically map AI applications, agents, models, and MCP servers. Connect them to owners, approved use cases, data access, vendors, risks, and controls.
• Runtime monitoring and detection (January 2027): Detect suspicious activity and guardrail violations, and prioritize investigations with context from the Trust Graph.
• Red teaming (Spring 2027): Uncover vulnerabilities through adversarial testing tailored to your business context, identifying exploitable paths and where protections need strengthening.
• Runtime enforcement (Summer 2027): Turn governance requirements into enforceable boundaries, blocking unauthorized actions before they happen.

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Pillar Security also brings deep AI security expertise. Its research team tracks emerging threats and develops guardrails and red teaming techniques. The team developed SAIL, a framework for securing AI agents aligned with ISO and NIST standards and OWASP guidance.

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“An agent can cross a line in a single action, long after its last review. That’s why security has to live where agents act: test them the way attackers will, and stop them the moment they go out of bounds. With Vanta, each of those moments becomes evidence that governance is working.” 

- Dor Sarig, Co-founder & CPO, Pillar Security

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AI governance at machine speed

Trust is the defining problem of the AI era. Companies cannot afford to slow down AI adoption, and they cannot lose control of their data. Vanta and Pillar together provide real-time guardrails that understand your business so your teams can move at full speed.

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Over 20,000 customers rely on Vanta to earn and prove trust, and real-time control of AI is the capability they’re asking for most. With Pillar, that’s what we’re building—starting with AI Inventory in January, and runtime enforcement behind it.

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AI Governance by Vanta will be available as a paid offering in January 2027.

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