Helmet Security has emerged from stealth mode with $9 million in funding from SYN Ventures and WhiteRabbit Ventures.
Headquartered in Washington, D.C., Helmet Security was co-founded by Fred Kneip (the founder of CyberGRX, which raised $100 million and was acquired by Marlin Equity Partners / ProcessUnity) and Kaushik Shanadi. Kneip serves as Helmet’s CEO and Shanadi as CTO.
The cybersecurity startup aims to secure the connections between AI agents and software and data.
It focuses on the Model Context Protocol (MCP), which is widely used as the underlying layer for these connections.
Helmet Security’s end-to-end platform continuously identifies, monitors, and enforces controls on MCP servers, to keep organizations protected against risks emerging from unmonitored connections.
The solution automatically scans for MCP servers, monitors and logs all traffic across MCP connections, and enables the identification and blocking of noncompliant connections.
Helmet Security has designed the solution to provide insights into how AI systems connect, communicate, and make decisions, readying it for all forms of agentic connectivity.
The platform integrates with existing endpoint detection and response tools, and identifies new MCP communication paths as they appear, to immediately bring them under control.
“By covering the full MCP lifecycle today and preparing to secure the emerging A2A methods for tomorrow, we help developers maintain speed while giving CISOs real guardrails. That’s what makes this platform workable and impactful in real enterprise environments,” said Shanadi.
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