Agentic artificial intelligence security startup Helmet Security today announced that it has raised $9 million in new funding to accelerate development and deployment of its platform that continuously discovers, monitors and enforces security controls on AI infrastructure and agentic AI communications.

Founded in 2021, Helmet Security is focused on securing the infrastructure behind modern agentic AI, particularly communications across the Model Context Protocol. MCP is a popular protocol that allows AI agents to securely connect to, interact with and exchange data with enterprise software systems, applications and services in real time.

Helmet’s platform can discover and map all MCP-based infrastructure inside an enterprise, including existing MCP servers and any new ones that emerge. Once a server or communication channel is detected, Helmet brings it under management so nothing slips through unnoticed.

Once MCP servers are discovered, the platform enables real-time monitoring and logging of all communications and data flows through the MCP connections to help detect malicious or unintended behavior. Examples of issues it can detect include attempts at unauthorized data exfiltration, prompt injection, or other protocol-level attacks that traditional security tools aren’t designed to catch.

Helmet also provides governance and policy enforcement that allows enterprises to define rules about which tools or servers are allowed, what communications are permitted or blocked and what access privileges are granted.

The company says it protects innovation without slowing it down by integrating with existing endpoint detection and response tools and application programming interface connections in an enterprise’s stack for discovery and blocking.

“AI is a new security frontier. There are a lot of technology products out there, but no one is addressing the business security problem of MCP until now,” said Chief Executive Fred Kneip. “Helmet helps chief information security officers understand what servers are already in their environment, what information they are sharing and who is using them. It then allows for simple policy enforcement to reduce the attack surface.”

The new funding came from SYN Ventures and WhiteRabbit Ventures.

“Helmet gives enterprises an immediate, installation-free view into where and how MCP is operating across their environments, plus the ability to act on rogue connections,” said Jay Leek, founder and managing partner of SYN Ventures. “That level of ease, visibility and instant impact is going to be a game changer.”

Image: Helmet Security