Astrix CEO on the Cisco Deal That Put Machine Identity Security in the Spotlight

Four years ago, Alon Jackson and his co-founders launched Astrix with a narrow focus that few in the industry cared about, securing and managing machine identities, the non-human digital entities that operate inside organizations. These include applications, services, automated processes and software that run behind the scenes and access enterprise systems.

That niche became far more important over the past two years, as the rise of artificial intelligence and AI agents turned machine identity into a major cybersecurity issue. Jackson told Globes, “We were lucky enough to be in the eye of the storm.” He said AI agents need system access, which suddenly gave non-human identity management a new and urgent role. He added that Astrix was effectively defining the category as the market shifted.

Astrix now helps organizations identify which agents are active on their networks, understand how they behave, determine whether that behavior is normal or malicious, and connect them more safely to company systems. Jackson said the company, which he founded in 2021 after serving in Unit 8200, has grown to more than 100 employees. He also said Anthropic invested in Astrix in the latest funding round and helped the company think several steps ahead.

Cisco announced this year that it will acquire Astrix for about $400 million. Jackson said the sale was the result of long-term relationships, not one sudden moment, and described the acquisition as a chance to scale globally. “Cisco is the infrastructure of the enterprise internet,” he said, adding that the deal will let Astrix bring its technology to large organizations worldwide. He said the coming months should bring “interesting news,” and that the goal remains to let major companies adopt AI agents securely at scale.