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Runtime security for AI agents is decided by whether it reads the whole conversation, ships today, and is built for the job rather than assembled around it. Agents do not just answer, they execute, and the attacks that matter unfold across turns, hide inside tool calls, and exploit the moment an agent acts. Two products can list the same features and still differ on what counts: whether detection is stateful across the session, whether the agent-securing pieces are generally available or still in preview, and whether the platform was built for AI runtime security or stitched together from acquisitions inside a much larger portfolio.
TrustGuard is NeuralTrust's AI runtime security, and it is the first runtime security built to extend across every AI agent, without a custom integration rebuilt for each tool or framework. Palo Alto Networks approaches AI from a vast cybersecurity portfolio, and Prisma AIRS is its AI security offering, with capabilities drawn in large part from its acquisition of Protect AI and its pending acquisition of Koi. Prisma AIRS overlaps with NeuralTrust on many capabilities, so this comparison is honest about where both are strong and focuses on the differences that decide AI runtime security in practice: stateful detection, shipping maturity, and whether the platform is built for this or assembled around it.
TL;DR
- NeuralTrust detects stateful multi-turn attacks across the whole conversation. Prisma AIRS scans per API call with contextual grounding and groups calls into sessions for logging, which is partial session awareness rather than stateful multi-turn detection.
- NeuralTrust is an independent company focused only on AI runtime security, built as one platform. Prisma AIRS is one offering inside a sprawling portfolio, with its AI capabilities assembled from the Protect AI and Koi acquisitions.
- NeuralTrust's agent runtime enforcement, including agent-to-tool authentication, is generally available. Palo Alto's AI Agent Gateway, the piece that enforces agent runtime and identity, is in limited preview.
- Both bring enterprise readiness, SIEM integration, and private and cloud deployment, so those are not the deciding factors.
NeuralTrust vs Palo Alto Networks: AI Runtime Security at a Glance
| Capability | NeuralTrust | Palo Alto |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise readiness | ✅ | ✅ |
| SIEM integration | ✅ | ✅ |
| Flexible deployment (private, cloud) | ✅ | ✅ |
| Stateful multi-turn detection | ✅ | ❌ |
| Independent, single-focus AI security | ✅ | ❌ |
| Generally available agent runtime enforcement | ✅ | ❌ |
NeuralTrust vs. Palo Alto Networks: Platform Overview
What is NeuralTrust TrustGuard?
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TrustGuard is NeuralTrust's AI runtime security. It inspects every interaction and stops attacks at the moment of execution, on every surface where your agents run: gateways, SDKs, browsers, and platforms. It was built for that job, and it enforces the way agents actually behave.
The design rests on one policy model that covers every threat class at once: injections, sensitive data, unsafe actions, and behavioral attacks. Collectors pull agent traffic from gateways, SDKs, browsers, sidecars, and log streams, protocol-typed policies run detection on every request and response, and the decision is enforced in-flight. Allow, block, or transform, before the action reaches your system. TrustGuard reads the session, the identity, and the protocol together, so it tracks context across turns, catches the multi-turn attack that no single message reveals, authenticates the agent to the tool at runtime, and stops the indirect injection or exfiltration before it executes.
TrustGuard integrates natively with TrustGate, NeuralTrust's own AI gateway, and extends across SDKs, browsers, and platforms with the same policy model. It runs in your private environment or in the cloud, carries enterprise readiness and SIEM integration, and ships as generally available. NeuralTrust is an independent company that does one thing, AI security, so TrustGuard is a single platform built for this rather than a set of parts assembled around it.
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What is Palo Alto Prisma AIRS?
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Palo Alto Networks is a large cybersecurity vendor with a broad portfolio across network, cloud, and security operations. Prisma AIRS is its AI security offering, and much of its AI capability was brought in through acquisition, primarily Protect AI, with agentic endpoint capabilities dependent on the pending acquisition of Koi.
Prisma AIRS spans several components: an AI Runtime Firewall that inspects AI traffic at the network layer, an API Intercept that embeds scanning into application code, AI Model Security, AI Red Teaming, and posture management, managed through Strata Cloud Manager. Its detection scans each API call, with contextual grounding to check a response against provided context, and it groups those calls into AI Sessions for logging and investigation. Its agent-securing layer, the AI Agent Gateway that enforces agent runtime and identity, is in limited preview. It is a broad AI security suite assembled across a large platform, strong on the enterprise fundamentals it inherits, but distinct from a single platform built for AI runtime security where stateful detection and agent enforcement ship as one.
Stateful Multi-Turn Detection: The Conversation vs the Single Call
Attacks on agents rarely fit in one message. A jailbreak fails once and lands on the third try, an injection is split across turns so no single call looks dangerous, and a manipulation escalates slowly. Detection that judges each call on its own cannot see the attack that lives between them.
TrustGuard sees the conversation, not just the call. It tracks context across turns and factors identity, protocol, and metadata into every decision, so it catches multi-turn attacks while they unfold and blocks them before they complete. The session is the unit of understanding, and enforcement follows from it.
Prisma AIRS scans per API call. It checks each request and response, offers contextual grounding to compare a response against supplied context, and groups those atomic scans into AI Sessions that teams can view for logging and investigation. That is partial session awareness: the calls are recorded together and can be reviewed, but the detection decision is made on the individual call, not on the evolving state of the conversation. A multi-turn attack that stays benign on every single call is exactly what a per-call model misses and a stateful one catches. TrustGuard is the stateful one.
Independent, Single-Focus AI Security: One Platform vs a Suite Assembled from Acquisitions
Focus shows up in the product. A company that does only AI security builds one platform where the pieces are designed together, and a large portfolio vendor tends to assemble AI capabilities from acquisitions and wire them into a broader stack.
NeuralTrust is an independent company focused solely on AI security, and TrustGuard is built as one platform. Detection, enforcement, the gateway, agent authentication, and session awareness are parts of a single system designed to work together, and the roadmap answers to AI runtime security rather than to a portfolio with many competing priorities.
Palo Alto Prisma AIRS is one offering inside a sprawling security portfolio, and its AI capabilities were brought together largely through acquisition, primarily Protect AI, with agentic endpoint security dependent on the pending Koi acquisition. That means the AI story is stitched from separately built pieces integrated onto a larger platform, and AI runtime security competes for attention against network, cloud, and security-operations lines of business. Integration and priority are things you inherit when your AI security is a module in a giant suite rather than the whole company's purpose. TrustGuard is the whole purpose.
Generally Available Agent Runtime Enforcement: Shipping Now vs Limited Preview
For securing agents, availability is not a detail. The piece that authenticates an agent and enforces on its runtime behavior only protects you once it actually ships, and a capability in preview is a plan, not a control.
TrustGuard enforces agent runtime today. It authenticates the agent to the tool at runtime, ties the tool call to the agent's identity, and enforces authentication and authorization together at the moment of execution, generally available and in production.
Palo Alto positions its AI Agent Gateway as the central place to enforce agent runtime and identity security, and by its own announcement that AI Agent Gateway is in limited preview. Its agentic endpoint security, meanwhile, depends on the close of the pending Koi acquisition. So the parts of Prisma AIRS that most directly address securing autonomous agents at runtime are not yet generally available. A limited-preview control and a pending acquisition are not the same as enforcement you can deploy now. TrustGuard is enforcement you can deploy now.
Final Verdict
Prisma AIRS is the closest competitor on paper, and it is fair to say both platforms cover a lot of the same ground. Both carry enterprise readiness, both integrate with SIEM, and both deploy in private and cloud environments. Those are not the deciding factors, and pretending otherwise would not survive scrutiny.
The decision sits on three differences. NeuralTrust detects stateful multi-turn attacks across the whole conversation, where Prisma AIRS scans per call and groups those scans into sessions for logging, which is partial session awareness. NeuralTrust is an independent company focused only on AI security, with TrustGuard built as one platform, where Prisma AIRS is one offering in a vast portfolio, its AI capabilities assembled from the Protect AI and Koi acquisitions. And NeuralTrust's agent runtime enforcement, including agent-to-tool authentication, is generally available, where Palo Alto's AI Agent Gateway is in limited preview and its agentic endpoint security waits on a pending acquisition.
NeuralTrust built TrustGuard as runtime security from the start, and it is the first runtime security built to extend across every AI agent without a custom integration for each one. If you are building on agents and you want stateful detection that reads the whole conversation, agent runtime enforcement you can deploy today, and a platform whose entire focus is AI security, NeuralTrust is built for exactly that.
Frequently Asked Questions about NeuralTrust vs. Palo Alto Networks
1. What is the main difference between NeuralTrust and Palo Alto Prisma AIRS?
Both cover much of the same ground, including enterprise readiness, SIEM integration, and private and cloud deployment. The differences that decide it are that NeuralTrust detects stateful multi-turn attacks across the whole conversation, is an independent company focused only on AI security with TrustGuard built as one platform, and ships agent runtime enforcement as generally available. Prisma AIRS scans per call, is one offering in a large portfolio assembled from acquisitions, and has its agent gateway in limited preview.
2. Does Palo Alto Prisma AIRS detect multi-turn attacks?
Prisma AIRS scans each API call and offers contextual grounding to check a response against supplied context, and it groups those scans into AI Sessions for logging and investigation. That is partial session awareness, with the detection decision made on the individual call. NeuralTrust detects statefully across turns, tracking the conversation so it catches multi-turn attacks that stay benign on any single call.
3. Is Palo Alto's agent runtime enforcement generally available?
By Palo Alto's own announcement, its AI Agent Gateway, the component that enforces agent runtime and identity security, is in limited preview, and its agentic endpoint security depends on the close of the pending Koi acquisition. NeuralTrust's agent runtime enforcement, including agent-to-tool authentication, is generally available.
4. Is Prisma AIRS built in-house?
Prisma AIRS is Palo Alto's AI security offering, and much of its AI capability was brought in through acquisition, primarily Protect AI, with agentic endpoint capabilities dependent on the pending Koi acquisition, integrated onto Palo Alto's broader platform. NeuralTrust is an independent company focused only on AI security, and TrustGuard is built as a single platform.
5. Do both products support enterprise deployment and SIEM?
Yes. Both NeuralTrust and Palo Alto bring enterprise readiness, SIEM integration, and deployment in private and cloud environments, so those are areas of parity. The meaningful differences are stateful multi-turn detection, independent single-focus versus a suite assembled from acquisitions, and generally available agent runtime enforcement versus a limited-preview agent gateway.
About the Author
Alessandro Pignati is Lead AI Security Researcher at NeuralTrust, where he leads research on AI and agentic security, advancing techniques to evaluate and secure large language models and autonomous AI systems. He specializes in adversarial machine learning, AI red teaming, LLM security, and AI safety, contributing to the development of secure and trustworthy AI.
NeuralTrust is an AI agent security platform, recognized in the Gartner 2025 Market Guide for AI Gateways and Guardian Agents, and the KuppingerCole 2025 Leadership Compass for Generative AI Defense. Headquartered in Barcelona with ISO 27001 certification.
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