Proofpoint has acquired Acuvity, a specialist in AI security and governance, as the vendor moves to combat the growing risks associated with enterprise adoption of generative AI and autonomous agents.
The acquisition adds AI-native visibility, governance, and runtime protection to Proofpoint’s platform, aimed at securing what the company describes as the “agentic workspace”.
While generative AI tools promise productivity gains, they also introduce new risks, including exposing sensitive data, intellectual property loss, regulatory breaches, prompt-injection attacks, and unauthorised “shadow AI” deployments.
“With this acquisition, Proofpoint expands its human- and agent-centric security platform to deliver comprehensive visibility, governance, and control across the agentic workspace,” Ryan Kalember, chief strategy officer at Proofpoint, said in a 13 February statement.
“Together, Proofpoint and Acuvity enable organisations to confidently adopt AI tools and agents with the governance, visibility and control required to manage risk.”
Acuvity’s platform provides visibility into how AI is being used across endpoints, browsers, and emerging AI infrastructure, including model integration frameworks and locally deployed AI tools. It also introduces detection models designed to understand context and intent, allowing organisations to monitor and govern interactions between users, AI systems and enterprise data.
Proofpoint said the acquisition will enable it to deliver unified protection spanning collaboration security, data security and AI governance within a single platform. The company argued that securing AI requires extending beyond traditional infrastructure protection to address how AI systems access, process and act on sensitive information.
Acuvity co-founder and CEO Satyam Sinha said the shift to AI-driven workflows demands a fundamentally new security model.
“AI is fundamentally reshaping how work gets done, and enterprises are overwhelmed by the pace of AI adoption and the complexity of securing it,” Sinha said.
“Securing that future requires a new approach – one that governs how AI thinks, acts and learns in real time.”
Proofpoint said Acuvity’s technology will enhance its ability to help organisations adopt AI securely, while maintaining compliance and protecting sensitive information, as AI becomes embedded in day-to-day enterprise operations.
David Hollingworth
David Hollingworth has been writing about technology for over 20 years, and has worked for a range of print and online titles in his career. He is enjoying getting to grips with cyber security, especially when it lets him talk about Lego.