F5 introduced the F5 AI Security Platform to give CISOs continuous visibility, governance, and protection across enterprise AI applications, models, agents, and the APIs connecting them. F5 also announced the acquisition of SurePath AI, a pioneer in network-based AI discovery, intent classification, and shadow AI detection, as a key component in the launch of the new F5 AI Security Platform to safeguard enterprise AI deployments.
Through a continuous, adaptive loop approach to governing, discovering, testing, and protecting enterprise AI workloads, the new platform is designed to extend F5’s Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) strategy to enterprise AI. As a global cybersecurity leader, F5 recognised the AI deployment realities of large enterprises, building the F5 AI Security Platform to support on-premises, air-gapped, private cloud, hybrid, and public cloud environments. This is intended to give organisations greater control over AI security where data residency, sovereignty, and operational requirements are non-negotiable.
AI systems now operate with more access, autonomy, and speed than even the most over-privileged human users, creating new risks for security teams and business leaders. A prompt injection, data leak, or agent acting beyond its authorised scope can expose sensitive information, disrupt operations, and erode customer trust.
At the same time, employees are adopting unauthorised tools and unsanctioned integrations, creating shadow AI footprints that most security teams cannot see, let alone govern. According to F5’s 2026 State of Application Strategy (SOAS) Report, 88% of organisations report at least one AI-related operational or security challenge.
“Most AI security today is a wrapper around a chatbot. That is not security,” said Kunal Anand, Chief Product Officer, F5. “Enterprises run AI inside regulated networks, behind APIs, and across agents that authenticate and act on their own. The F5 AI Security Platform gives CISOs and security leaders what they have been missing: continuous control over every model, agent, and API, wherever the AI runs, delivered on the same F5 platform that has secured and delivered enterprise applications for three decades.”
SurePath AI: Closing the AI visibility gap
The addition of SurePath AI powers the F5 AI Security Platform’s approach to network-based AI discovery, identifying AI usage across the enterprise, including shadow AI, without requiring direct application integrations. With frictionless deployment through network redirects and out-of-band analysis, SurePath AI gives security teams a unified visibility layer that detects unauthorised AI activity, classifies the intent behind each workflow, and continuously traces agent tool calls and MCP server connections. This visibility feeds directly into the F5 AI Security Platform, informing the risks to be tested by F5 AI Red Team and mitigated by F5 AI Guardrails.
Delivering a continuous cycle of protection
The F5 AI Security Platform addresses AI risk through four integrated pillars and an overarching observability layer that creates a persistent security lifecycle rather than a one-time compliance exercise. Features include:
- AI governance: Translate specific risk tolerances, privacy requirements, and regulatory obligations into enforceable boundaries for AI prompts, outputs, tool use, and data access.
- AI discovery: Gain continuous visibility into every AI application, agent, and MCP tool call running across the enterprise, whether sanctioned or not. The platform classifies activity by use case and intent, so teams know not just what is running but why. SurePath AI’s network-based discovery does this passively, with no application-level integration required.
- AI security testing: Stress-test AI systems against more than 140,000 attack patterns from the deepest AI threat database in the industry before those systems reach production, converting findings directly into enforceable defences.
- AI runtime protection: Define guardrails in plain language and deploy them at the point of interaction, where the platform has demonstrated up to 98.2% security efficacy in independent testing, blocking prompt injection, excessive agent autonomy, and data leakage.
- AI observability: Provide a complete audit trail across every AI interaction on the platform, maintaining the accountability and traceability that regulated industries require.
The flexibility to deploy anywhere without compromise
With this new solution, F5 uniquely combines AI security capabilities with flexible deployment options, enabling enterprises to operate across on-premises, air-gapped, private cloud, hybrid, and public cloud deployments. This is especially valuable to CISOs in highly regulated industries with exacting data residency and sovereignty requirements. SurePath AI’s lightweight network-based deployment model reinforces this flexibility, requiring no changes to existing application architectures.
Heightened visibility is increasingly critical as AI agents proliferate. F5’s 2026 SOAS Report states 98% of organisations are preparing for agentic AI, but the speed of agent adoption is outpacing the controls designed to manage it. When agents can authenticate, call tools, access data, and take actions autonomously, the blast radius of a single misconfiguration or exploit grows exponentially.
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