Head-to-head · updated 13 September 2026
DataShield vs Astrix: what do you buy now that Astrix is Cisco?
Astrix built one of the best non-human identity products shipped. It finds API keys, service accounts, OAuth grants, MCP servers. And the agents no one wrote down. Then it flags the ones with far too much power. Workday, HubSpot, NetApp and Figma all bought it. Cisco closed the deal on 29 June 2026. The day after, Astrix stopped selling new solo licences.
So if you're here, you likely searched "Astrix alternative". You want a plain answer. Here it is: we don't do find. We won't say we do. DataShield is the layer that starts once the list is clean. Each checked call gets checked against the agent's access, right then. Each choice gets sealed into a chain you can check, without trusting us.
The short version
Pick DataShield when
- You need to prove an agent's access log wasn't edited. Our chain answers that with math. You can run the check yourself. Try the verifier.
- You want to pull an agent's access mid-session. The very next checked tool call should fail. A short-lived credential still lives until it expires.
- Your security team wants the tokens, the policy plane and the evidence on your own infrastructure, with keys you hold. Astrix is SaaS.
- Roadmap independence matters. Ours is ours. Astrix capabilities now land inside Cisco Identity Intelligence, Secure Access, Duo and Splunk, on Cisco's schedule.
Pick Astrix (now Cisco) when
- Your real problem is "we don't know what we have." Astrix's discovery of NHIs, MCP servers and OAuth grants is genuinely good. We don't compete with it.
- You're already a Cisco shop. The same technology is being folded into tools you own. The cheapest path is the one you've already paid for.
- You want secure-by-design provisioning. Their Agent Control Plane mints agents with short-lived credentials. Scoped, just-in-time access, at creation.
- You need detection of odd machine-identity behaviour, at SaaS scale. Their ADR work and Splunk integration go somewhere we don't.
Bottom line: Astrix tells you which agents exist and how over-gated they are. DataShield decides whether a given call is allowed right now. It keeps proof of the answer, too. Those are different jobs. Most mature teams need both. Your Astrix evaluation stalled on 30 June? Start with the half you can still buy.
Feature by feature
Competitor cells describe what Astrix's public site says. Also its product pages and the Cisco acquisition posts. We use the date above. If we got something wrong, email support@myorg.ai. We'll correct it and credit you.
| What matters | DataShield | Astrix | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| NHI and agent discovery | Not a find tool. We govern the agents and datasets you register with us. Need an inventory of each OAuth grant in your SaaS estate? Buy that elsewhere. | Real-time inventory of AI agents, MCP servers and NHIs, with risk context. This is the core of the product, and it's strong. | ◇ |
| Agent authorization | Each checked tool call passes a scope ceiling. Plus a declared access tier, and a pull-back re-check before dispatch. The decision happens at call time. | Rule at creation, with short-lived and just-in-time credentials, via the Agent Control Plane. We found no per-call authorization shown in their public docs. | ◆ |
| Mid-session revocation | Revoke or suspend, and the next checked call fails closed. No waiting on token lifetime. | Short credential lifetimes shrink the window. Shrinking a window isn't closing it. Ask them what happens at minute three of a ten-minute token. | ◆ |
| Audit evidence | SHA-256 hash chain, with Ed25519-signed checkpoints. Those checkpoints are themselves chained. A check names the failure: tamper, insert, delete or cut-short. Try the checker. | Activity monitoring and risk reporting, with Splunk as the SOC destination post-acquisition. We found no open crypto proof against tamper. | ◆ |
| Break-glass | Scoped, time-boxed emergency access for agents. It auto-revokes. It can't be quietly removed from the log. | Not shown in their public docs. | ◆ |
| GDPR erasure | Crypto-shred of per-subject keys. Plus ISO 27560 consent receipts. The audit chain still verifies after erasure. | Not shown. Their product governs identities, not the subject data those identities touch. | ◆ |
| Tokenization and data handling | We tokenize datasets at ingest. Agents then query tokenized data over MCP. Turning a token back into real data is a gated, audited step. Plus quasi-ID generalization, as a rule. Dates become year, decade, or age band. ZIPs become 3 or 4 digits. Phones, SSNs and emails get partial masking too. Each column gets a measured score. | Out of scope. Astrix secures the credential, not the payload the credential reaches. | ◆ |
| MCP and agents | Native MCP endpoints on Auth, Ontology and Lighthouse. MCP tool tokens with scope ceilings. Per-call metering, attributed to the agent. | MCP servers are a first-class find target. Agent provisioning is built in. Different half of the same problem. | ◈ |
| Deployment | Self-hosted, in your own cloud or data center. Or on a dedicated single-tenant server we operate. Your keys, always. | SaaS. Post-acquisition, delivery folds into Cisco Security Cloud surfaces. | ◆ |
| Availability as a product | You can buy it today, from us, at an open price. | Standalone new-licence sales ended 30 June 2026. Existing deployments and support continue. New buyers go through Cisco. | ◆ |
| Maturity signals | Auth, Guardian and Lighthouse are live and in use. Guardian and Lighthouse since April 2026. SOC 2 not yet certified, and we say so. | Founded 2021. Over $85M raised, plus a $45M Series B led by Menlo Ventures. Named enterprise clients. Gartner recognition. Now Cisco behind it, too. | ◇ |
| Pricing | Open pricing, scoped instant quote, no sales wall. | Never public, and now a Cisco line item, rather than its own. | ◆ |
◆ DataShield leads◇ Astrix leads◈ comparable
Astrix claims come from astrix.security, the founders' acquisition post, and Cisco's announcement. Last checked 13 September 2026. We link them below, rather than paraphrase from memory.
Three things you get here that you won't get from an NHI inventory
A decision at the moment of the call
Find tells you an agent has too much access. Provisioning gives it a credential that expires in an hour. Neither one is standing at the door when the call arrives. We are: scope ceiling, access tier, pull-back check, then dispatch. How Auth does it.
Proof that survives an audit
A log that can be silently edited has no evidentiary value. Ours is a hash chain, with signed checkpoints. The checker tells you what broke, not just that something did. That's the property EU AI Act Article 12 and HIPAA §164.312(b) reviewers care about. Try it in your browser, no signup.
A stack that stays yours
Run the whole thing on your own infrastructure. With your own keys, on a roadmap no one else sets. Design-partner terms include source escrow. A small vendor shouldn't be a single point of failure. See the architecture.
Where Astrix is genuinely stronger
Let's be fair about this. Astrix saw non-human identity as a category. Before most people had a name for it. They raised over $85 million on that bet. They got Workday, NetApp, HubSpot, Figma and Boomi to run it. Their Discover pillar answers a question we don't. What is actually out there. Say you have eleven years of service accounts and OAuth grants. Across forty SaaS apps. You need a crawler. That crawler is theirs. The Agent Control Plane is also the right instinct. Minting agents with scoped, short-lived, just-in-time credentials is a real control, not marketing. And Cisco gives the technology distribution we will never match.
Here's the push-back. Issuance-time control and call-time control are not the same thing. The difference shows up on a Tuesday afternoon. An analyst resigns at two o'clock. Her agent got a perfectly scoped credential at nine. It's halfway through a long job. A shorter token lifetime makes that window smaller. A per-call access check makes it zero. Gartner expects most not allowed agent transactions through 2028 to be internal rule violations. Not attacks. That's exactly the failure a posture score catalogues. A control point stops it. Then there's the awkward part no one at Cisco will say out loud. You can't buy Astrix on its own any more. Whatever you sign now, you're signing up for someone else's integration timeline. Across four separate products.
Questions worth asking both of us
These are the questions we'd want answered if we were buying. Ask them on each vendor call, plus ours.
Astrix stopped selling standalone licences. What are my options?
Three, roughly. Buy the feature through Cisco. As it lands in Identity Intelligence, Secure Access, Duo and Splunk. Stay on your current Astrix setup. The founders said that keeps its support and team. Or split the problem. Keep a find tool for inventory. Put an independent control and proof layer under your agents. Plenty of teams take the third road. It's the one we sell into.
Can you cryptographically prove an audit log entry wasn't deleted?
DataShield: yes. Each record commits to the one before it. Checkpoints are signed and chained. A check tells delete apart from cut-short and from tamper. Run it against a sample chain at /verify. Astrix: their site shows activity watching and risk reports. Splunk sits downstream after the deal. We found no shown tamper-proof method. Ask to see one.
What happens to a revoked agent mid-session?
DataShield re-checks access on each checked tool call. So a pulled grant bites on the next call. Astrix issues short-lived, just-in-time credentials through the Agent Control Plane. That limits how long a stale credential works. But it doesn't kill it on command. Not as far as we can tell from their public docs. Ask both of us the same question. How many seconds after I click revoke does the agent stop working?
Do you replace NHI discovery?
No. We don't crawl your SaaS estate hunting for forgotten OAuth grants. A vendor telling you otherwise is selling you something. We govern the agents, tools and datasets registered with us. Most clients who care about this run a find tool as well. That's the right answer.
How does GDPR erasure interact with the audit trail?
DataShield crypto-shreds per-subject keys and issues an ISO 27560 consent receipt. Actor identities in the chain are HMAC-committed, not names. So the proof stays verifiable after the subject is gone. Astrix governs identities rather than subject data. So the question mostly doesn't arise for them. Say your obligation is "delete the person, keep the log." That obligation has to land somewhere.
Does DataShield have SOC 2?
Not yet, and we won't imply otherwise. Auth is live now. A public threat model, too, and a checker anyone can run. Guardian and Lighthouse have been live since April 2026. Design-partner terms include source escrow. Astrix has the bigger compliance and client résumé. And now a very large parent. Details on the security page.
- Astrix hero: "Discover, secure, and deploy AI agents responsibly across the enterprise." Site notice: standalone sales of new licences ended, effective 30 June 2026. - astrix.security, 13 Sep 2026
- Founders confirm the Cisco deal. Over $85M raised, including a $45M Series B led by Menlo Ventures. Existing deployments, support and teams stay in place. - Astrix blog, 4 May 2026
- Cisco: Astrix features will be integrated into Cisco Identity Intelligence, Cisco Secure Access, Duo and Splunk. - Cisco Blogs, 4 May 2026
- The product page claims: "Deploy, powered by ACP (Agent Control Plane): provision secure-by-design AI agents with short-lived credentials, just-in-time, precisely scoped access, and policy at creation." Quoted in full. - astrix.security/product, 13 Sep 2026
- ≥80% of unauthorized agent transactions through 2028 will be internal policy violations. Not attacks. - Gartner, 2026
Other head-to-heads
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DirectDataShield vs Aembit
Workload identity brokering meets agent break-glass and crypto-shred.
AllEvery comparison
One honest scorecard per vendor, sources at the bottom.
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