What is Prisma AIRS built from?
It draws on Palo Alto Networks' 2025 Protect AI acquisition and Portkey, a deal reported at about $140M in the company's 10-Q and closed on May 29, 2026.
Beam vs PALO ALTO NETWORKS
Beam vs Prisma AIRS
Prisma AIRS is an enterprise AI security platform covering discovery, posture management, red-teaming, runtime protection and agent security, assembled from Palo Alto's Protect AI acquisition and Portkey (about $140M per the company's 10-Q, closed May 29, 2026). It operates at a scale Beam does not attempt. Beam is a laptop-and-browser control layer for coding agents: workspace policy, Sentinel, and heuristic scans — not an estate-wide discovery platform.
Beam vs Prisma AIRS, side by side
Details below are drawn from a September 2026 review of the AI agent security market. Some figures are vendor-sourced or analyst estimates, and this is a fast-moving space — check with each vendor before you buy. Composio details come from its own pricing and documentation pages as of October 2026.
| Beam | Prisma AIRS (Palo Alto Networks) | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | Local-first activity monitor, policy enforcement, and pre-run scanner for AI coding agents, with a Sentinel browser extension for AI chats. | Enterprise AI security platform spanning discovery, posture, red-teaming, runtime and agent security. |
| Monitoring | Shell commands, file changes, tool calls, network endpoints and browser actions from harnesses such as Claude Code, Codex and Cursor, plus Beam Sentinel checks on supported AI chat sites before send. Normalised into local NDJSON with risk flags and evidence attached. | Runtime protection and agent security across an organisation's AI estate. |
| Skill / MCP scanning | Yes. SKILL.md files and MCP configurations are scanned before you run them, using 11 heuristic patterns plus an MCP version-pin check. Workspace admins can also block an MCP server for the org or one user. | Not specifically covered in our source research. |
| Blocking / enforcement | Yes. Workspace owners and admins set observe, advisory, or enforce policy. Enforce denies matching tool calls on Claude Code and Codex PreToolUse hooks. The Sentinel Chrome extension pauses or blocks high-risk browser sends and can hold a send after redacting live secrets. | Runtime protection is part of the platform. |
| Individual use | Free for up to 3 people, and Pro for one person at $8/month. Team workspaces add owner/admin roles, org baselines, stricter member overrides and a control plane. | None. This is an enterprise platform sale. |
| Deployment | Local collector plus a workspace dashboard. Apple and Windows MDM. Sentinel Chrome extension for browser AI chats. Licensed self-hosted control plane for teams that need it on their own infrastructure. | Enterprise deployment within the Palo Alto Networks platform. |
| Source / licence | AGPL-3.0 for the local CLI and collector; the multi-user control plane is proprietary. | Commercial, not open source. |
| Pricing | Free for up to 3 people. Pro $8/month for one person. Team $20 per developer and $5 per browser seat a month, billed yearly. | Enterprise custom quote, no public price. |
Prisma AIRS in numbers
As reported in our source research. Some figures are estimates.
- Built from
- The Protect AI acquisition (2025) and Portkey
- Portkey deal
- About $140M per Palo Alto Networks' 10-Q, closed May 29, 2026
- Scope
- Discovery, posture, red-teaming, runtime, agent security
Where Prisma AIRS does more
- Covers the whole enterprise AI estate — discovery, posture, red-teaming, runtime — where Beam covers one machine's agent activity.
- Runtime protection and enforcement are part of the platform.
- Backed by a major security vendor, assembled through the Protect AI and Portkey acquisitions.
Where Beam differs
- Beam addresses one narrow question — what did the coding agent on this laptop do — with no platform commitment.
- Beam runs locally, keeps its record on the machine, and redacts credentials before writing.
- Beam's pre-run scan of a SKILL.md or mcp.json is a single command on a single file.
Beam’s current gaps
- Enforce is hook-based: a native deny is wired for Claude Code and Codex PreToolUse. Cursor, Copilot CLI and Gemini currently get a deny note, not a verified block.
- Missing, unreadable or expired cached policy allows the action. Beam is not a fail-closed kernel sandbox or an in-silicon watchdog.
- Scanning is heuristic pattern matching. It produces false positives, misses novel phrasing, and is not a guarantee of safety.
- There is no SOC 2 report and no default SIEM forwarder. Kernel isolation like OpenShell remains a different layer.
Which one fits
If you are buying a platform to secure an organisation's whole AI estate, Prisma AIRS is that category and Beam is not competing for it. Beam fits earlier and smaller: one developer, one machine, one question about what an agent did.
FAQ
Does Prisma AIRS replace a local agent monitor?
They answer different questions. Prisma AIRS covers an organisation's AI estate; Beam records what a coding agent did on one developer machine.
Is there a free tier?
No public price is listed — it is an enterprise custom quote. Beam is free for up to 3 people; Team is $20 per developer a month, billed yearly.
See how Beam works
Beam is an early, local-first prototype. Read what it actually does today before comparing it further.