Acuvity (now Proofpoint) vs Lakera Guard / Lakera Red
Acuvity (now Proofpoint) vs Lakera Guard / Lakera Red: side-by-side comparison of two memory governance, privacy & safety systems — architecture, taxonomy, license, pricing, MCP/A2A support, and direct edges.
Acuvity (now Proofpoint) · Lakera Guard / Lakera Red
Where they differ (9)
Rows where both sides have data and the values disagree — the shortlist of dimensions that actually distinguish these two systems.
| Acuvity (now Proofpoint) | Lakera Guard / Lakera Red | |
|---|---|---|
| Type | MCP / Shadow-AI runtime enforcement | Real-time prompt-injection + poisoning screen |
| Created | 2023 (founded by cybersecurity veterans; acquired by Proofpoint Feb 12 2026) | 2021 (founded 2021; Lakera Guard product launched Aug 2023; $10M seed 2023; $20M Series A Jul 2024) |
| Pricing | enterprise pricing via Proofpoint (not public); contact sales | Developer: free (10K API calls/mo); Pro: contact sales (higher volume + advanced detection); Enterprise: custom (on… |
| Funding | no public funding data found — pre-acquisition private company; acquired by Proofpoint for undisclosed amount | $30M total ($10M seed Redalpine/Atomico 2023; $20M Series A Jul 2024 Redpoint Ventures + Dropbox VC + Citi Ventures… |
| Deployment | on-prem or cloud (Proofpoint enterprise deployment); agentless approach | REST API (SaaS cloud) or self-hosted Enterprise deployment |
| API surface | REST (typical SaaS REST + first-party SDK pattern; see vendor docs for language coverage) | REST, SDK: Python, JS |
| MCP | Yes — Secure MCP servers (Model Context Protocol) is a core capability; protects MCP-based agent integrations | no data — MCP referenced in Lakera blog as a threat-research topic only; no native MCP integration advertised (searched lakera.ai, docs.lakera.ai, lakera.ai/blog) |
| A2A | no data — searched proofpoint.com/us/platform/ai-security, acuvity.ai/, acuvity.ai/integrations/, acuvity.ai/blog/; A2A protocol not advertised | no data — searched lakera.ai/lakera-guard, docs.lakera.ai, docs.lakera.ai/lakera-guard/integrations; A2A protocol not advertised |
| OpenTelemetry | no data — searched acuvity.ai, proofpoint.com/us/platform/ai-security, docs.acuvity.ai; OpenTelemetry export not advertised | no data — searched lakera.ai/lakera-guard, docs.lakera.ai; OpenTelemetry export not advertised |
At a glance
| Acuvity (now Proofpoint) | Lakera Guard / Lakera Red | |
|---|---|---|
| Section | Memory governance, privacy & safety | Memory governance, privacy & safety |
| Tier | T1 | T1 |
| Type | MCP / Shadow-AI runtime enforcement | Real-time prompt-injection + poisoning screen |
| Created | 2023 (founded by cybersecurity veterans; acquired by Proofpoint Feb 12 2026) | 2021 (founded 2021; Lakera Guard product launched Aug 2023; $10M seed 2023; $20M Series A Jul 2024) |
| Pricing | enterprise pricing via Proofpoint (not public); contact sales | Developer: free (10K API calls/mo); Pro: contact sales (higher volume + advanced detection); Enterprise: custom (on… |
| Funding | no public funding data found — pre-acquisition private company; acquired by Proofpoint for undisclosed amount | $30M total ($10M seed Redalpine/Atomico 2023; $20M Series A Jul 2024 Redpoint Ventures + Dropbox VC + Citi Ventures… |
| Backend storage | custom | custom |
| Deployment | on-prem or cloud (Proofpoint enterprise deployment); agentless approach | REST API (SaaS cloud) or self-hosted Enterprise deployment |
| API surface | REST (typical SaaS REST + first-party SDK pattern; see vendor docs for language coverage) | REST, SDK: Python, JS |
| Embedding | locked | locked |
| Multi-tenancy | hard-isolation | hard-isolation |
| MCP | Yes — Secure MCP servers (Model Context Protocol) is a core capability; protects MCP-based agent integrations | no data — MCP referenced in Lakera blog as a threat-research topic only; no native MCP integration advertised (searched lakera.ai, docs.lakera.ai, lakera.ai/blog) |
| A2A | no data — searched proofpoint.com/us/platform/ai-security, acuvity.ai/, acuvity.ai/integrations/, acuvity.ai/blog/; A2A protocol not advertised | no data — searched lakera.ai/lakera-guard, docs.lakera.ai, docs.lakera.ai/lakera-guard/integrations; A2A protocol not advertised |
| OpenTelemetry | no data — searched acuvity.ai, proofpoint.com/us/platform/ai-security, docs.acuvity.ai; OpenTelemetry export not advertised | no data — searched lakera.ai/lakera-guard, docs.lakera.ai; OpenTelemetry export not advertised |
| Optimised for | governance + compliance + audit + adversarial hardening | governance + compliance + audit + adversarial hardening |
| Anti-fit | not for hobbyist / non-production use cases | not for hobbyist / non-production use cases |
Taxonomy
| Axis | Acuvity (now Proofpoint) | Lakera Guard / Lakera Red |
|---|---|---|
| storage | n/a | proprietary |
| retrieval | agentic | injection |
| persistence | session | session |
| update | read-only | read-only |
| unit | prompt | attack |
| governance | auditable | auditable |
| conflict | n/a | n/a |
Pros & cons
Acuvity (now Proofpoint)
Pros: Enterprise DLP for AI products — protects against data exfiltration via memory writes/reads; backed by Proofpoint's enterprise channel.
Cons: Enterprise-tier pricing and complexity; smaller mind-share than Lakera or Microsoft Defender for AI.
Lakera Guard / Lakera Red
Pros: Memory-aware guardrail product — Guard for runtime + Red for adversarial testing; covers prompt-injection-into-memory specifically.
Cons: Closed SaaS; rule library is opaque; per-call cost can be meaningful at high volume.