F5 has launched the F5 AI Security Platform, aimed at providing Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) with enhanced visibility, governance, and protection for enterprise AI applications, models, agents, and the APIs connecting them.
This development includes the strategic acquisition of SurePath AI, known for its expertise in network-based AI discovery, intent classification, and shadow AI detection. The integration of SurePath AI into the platform underscores F5's commitment to securing AI deployments within enterprises.
Enhanced Security for Diverse Environments
The F5 AI Security Platform is engineered to operate across various environments, including on-premises, air-gapped, private cloud, hybrid, and public cloud settings. By adopting a continuous, adaptive approach to governing, discovering, testing, and defending enterprise AI workloads, the platform extends F5’s Application Delivery and Security Platform (ADSP) strategy. This offering ensures organizations can uphold data residency, sovereignty, and operational needs without compromise.
As AI systems gain increased access and speed, they introduce new risks for security teams. Issues such as prompt injections, data leaks, and unauthorized agent actions threaten sensitive data and operations. Moreover, unauthorized tools and integrations contribute to shadow AI, creating visibility challenges for security teams. According to F5’s 2026 State of Application Strategy (SOAS) Report, 88% of organizations face at least one AI-related operational or security challenge.
Unifying Visibility with SurePath AI
The incorporation of SurePath AI into the F5 platform brings network-based AI discovery capabilities
The incorporation of SurePath AI into the F5 platform brings network-based AI discovery capabilities, allowing enterprises to detect shadow AI activities without direct application integrations. Security teams gain a unified visibility layer, which identifies unauthorized AI actions and classifies workflow intent. This information feeds into the F5 AI Security Platform, directing F5 AI Red Team tests and enabling the F5 AI Guardrails to mitigate risks.
The F5 AI Security Platform leverages four integrated pillars, alongside an overarching observability layer, to ensure continuous AI risk management. Key features include AI governance for managing risk tolerances and privacy requirements, AI discovery for monitoring AI activities, AI security testing for identifying vulnerabilities, and AI runtime protection for implementing security measures at interaction points. The platform has demonstrated a security efficacy rate of up to 98.2% in independent testing, effectively preventing prompt injection, excessive agent autonomy, and data leaks.
Flexible Deployment Options for Regulated Industries
The platform's flexible deployment capabilities are particularly beneficial for CISOs in regulated sectors with stringent data residency demands. SurePath AI’s lightweight network-based deployment enhances this flexibility without necessitating changes to existing application structures.
Heightened visibility remains crucial as AI agents become more prevalent. F5's 2026 SOAS Report indicates that 98% of organizations are preparing for agentic AI, yet the rapid adoption often outpaces controls.
F5, the pioneer in delivering and securing every app and API, introduces 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.
Public cloud environments
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 pioneer, F5 recognized 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 organizations 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 authorized scope can expose sensitive information, disrupt operations, and erode customer trust.
Adopting unauthorized tools
At the same time, employees are adopting unauthorized 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 organizations 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.”
Unified visibility layer
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 unauthorized 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.
Application-level integration
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.
AI security capabilities
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 organizations 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.
