From Cisco snapping up a cybersecurity start-up to a freshly revamped Salesforce Agentexchange, here are extracts from some of this week’s most popular news stories.
Cisco Nears $350M Deal for AI Security Startup – Should Contact Centers Be Paying Attention?
Cisco is reportedly in advanced talks to acquire Astrix Security, an Israeli cybersecurity startup, in a deal valued somewhere between $250 million and $350 million.
The potential acquisition, first reported by The Information, seems to be driven by the security risks that come with deploying AI agents at scale.
Founded in 2021 by Alon Jackson and Idan Gour, both veterans of Israel’s elite Unit 8200 intelligence unit, Astrix has built its platform around the concept of ‘non-human identities’ (NHIs).
In plain terms, these are the API keys, service accounts, OAuth tokens, and machine credentials that AI agents and automated processes rely on to operate inside corporate environments.
As AI agent adoption accelerates, the volume of these identities is growing fast, and most organizations still have very limited visibility into what those agents are actually doing once embedded in their systems.
In discussing the news, Alon Jackson, CEO of Astrix Security, said:
“Many organizations want to integrate AI into every aspect of their work, but they need robust security. Our platform ensures that AI agents are not only effective but also secure and properly managed.”
Salesforce Relaunches AgentExchange, Marking a New Phase In Its AI Agent Marketplace Strategy
Salesforce has updated AgentExchange, its marketplace for AI agents, as part of its broader shift to agentic customer experience.
Having previously announced the early version of the marketplace last year, this update has shifted from a builder marketplace of components to a usable catalog of deployable AI agents, acting as a trusted hub for enterprises to discover, evaluate, and deploy solutions
AgentExchange positions AI agents as an extension of the workforce that can handle routine or complex tasks across the customer lifecycle, from service inquiries to sales engagement.
Brian Landsman, CEO of AgentExchange and EVP Global Partnerships at Salesforce, explains how the marketplace model extension gives customers a single place to build and deploy agents while helping partners reach more users and scale distribution more efficiently.
“Twenty years ago, we pioneered the concept of an app marketplace with AppExchange, and we’ve been number one ever since,” he said.
“Now, we are evolving the marketplace for the agentic era, bringing into one place everything that customers need to build and deploy agents, apps, and integrations across the enterprise, with the controls they expect.”
