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Securing AI Transformation: Why Cato Networks Acquired Aim Security

4m Read

Research

Written by
Shlomo Kramer

Published
Sept 03, 2025

AI is transforming how organizations operate, but it also introduces a new and complex attack surface. From unmanaged AI use to data leakage and model manipulation, traditional security tools are blind to the risks AI brings. Security teams must adapt to safeguard sensitive data, ensure compliance, and protect against emerging AI-powered threats.

At Cato, we have always built with one guiding principle: support the next shift in enterprise IT with an architecture that adapts to secure it. The acquisition of Aim Security, a leader in AI security, is a continuation of that principle to enable IT to ride the next IT era, the era of AI transformation.

Why Aim, Why Now

Enterprises are rushing to adopt AI across every dimension of their business: employees experimenting with ChatGPT, departments deploying Microsoft Copilot, and engineering teams building custom AI agents. Each of these interactions could expose sensitive data, introduce compliance risk, and create new opportunities for adversaries. 

Aim built a platform designed from the ground up to address these risks. Their solution secures three critical dimensions of enterprise AI: 

  • AI you use – controlling interactions with public AI services. 
  • AI you build – protecting internal AI applications and agents at runtime. 
  • AI lifecycle – hardening the development and deployment of enterprise AI models. 

 

This breadth and depth set Aim apart. In large enterprises, they have demonstrated both strong win rates and the ability to operationalize AI security at scale. For Cato, integrating these capabilities was the fastest, most credible path to secure our customers’ AI transformation. 

A complete solution to secure every AI interaction

Secure every AI interaction, from 3rd party AI usage to homegrown AI applications and agents. This offering
leverages the industry’s most advanced AI detection engine and easily integrates with any enterprise environment.

Discover Shadow AI

Identify all AI applications and models used across your organization with their associated risks. Gain visibility into hidden or unsanctioned AI use to prevent data exposure and compliance risks.

Govern and Secure AI Interactions

Monitor and control employee prompts and system interactions with AI services. Enforce security and data governance policies to prevent the sharing of sensitive information or misuse of AI outputs.

Secure the AI Developments Lifecycle

Continuously assess and harden your AI development cycles. Uncover misconfigurations vulnerabilities in models and pipelines before they reach production

Protect Homegrown AI Applications

Detect and block attacks such as prompt injection, data exfiltration, and malicious payloads with advanced runtime guardrails – ensuring your homegrown AI applications remain trustworthy, compliant, and resilient throughout operation.

Protect AI Agents You Build and Run

Discover and assess risk in your agentic AI systems and applications and deploy cutting-edge runtime guardrails to protect them against prompt injection, data poisoning, and unauthorized access.

What This Means for Cato

By embedding Aim’s inspection technology into Cato SPACE, our distributed enforcement layer, we gain the ability to analyze AI interactions in real time: prompts, responses, agent workflows, and model outputs. This is not simply DLP repackaged for AI. It is a new security attack surface requiring brand new security capabilities, and Aim’s technology was purpose-built to deliver. 

In the near term, Aim will remain available as a standalone product. By early 2026, it will converge into the Cato platform, giving customers the choice to adopt AI security today and seamlessly migrate to SASE tomorrow.

What This Means for Enterprises

The AI security category is still young, but its trajectory is clear. Enterprises will need controls over AI interactions, just as they did for web, cloud, and email in past decades. What is different this time is the speed. AI adoption is measured in months, not years. That urgency is why we acted now. 

What this means for IT leaders and enterprises: 

  • Protection for every AI use case – Employees are already experimenting with public AI tools, departments are deploying copilots, and developers are building custom agents. Without safeguards, each of these entry points can expose sensitive data or introduce compliance risks. Comprehensive protection across all use cases ensures that AI adoption can move forward without opening new vulnerabilities. 
  • A holistic approach instead of point tools – Managing AI risks across a patchwork of disconnected solutions creates gaps, overlaps, and operational complexity. Enterprises reduce risk and simplify governance when AI security converges into a single, cloud-native platform that fits naturally with existing IT environments. 
  • Research-driven defenses – AI attacks evolve quickly, and generic security tools often lag behind. Enterprises benefit when their defenses are informed by dedicated research teams uncovering AI-specific vulnerabilities and rapidly translating those findings into protections that stay ahead of adversaries. 

 

With Cato and Aim, enterprises benefit from the breadth and depth of Aim’s AI security capabilities, delivered anywhere AI is deployed and used through the Cato SASE Cloud Platform, and backed by cutting-edge research that ensures continuous optimal protection against a rapidly evolving AI threat landscape. 

The Way Forward

For nearly a decade, enterprises trusted Cato to simplify and secure network transformation, replacing rigid legacy infrastructure with a converged and global cloud-native platform. Now, the same shift is underway with AI. Just as SASE became the foundation for a new era of networking and security, enterprises now need to extend this foundation for the speed and complexity of AI. Our strategy was always to enable organizations to boldly, and safely, go after whatever comes next. Today, we jointly enter the new era of secure AI transformation.