Obsidian Security for AI Agent Security: Features, Pricing, and Alternatives

This article examines Obsidian Security's approach to agent security.

What is Obsidian Security?

Obsidian Security started as a SaaS security platform for Fortune 1000 enterprises before adding AI agent security capabilities in September 2025. Founded by former Cylance CTO, the company raised a Series B of $20M in 2019 led by Wing, with backing from GV and Greylock. The platform combines three core functions: SSPM (SaaS Security Posture Management) for configuration management, ITDR (Identity Threat Detection and Response) for threat detection, and their newer AI Threat & Risk Management module.

The company targets large enterprises across banking, insurance, telecom, healthcare, and high tech, with customers including Snowflake, T-Mobile, Pure Storage, Upwork, Databricks, Seagate, and BigCommerce. Obsidian protects over 200 organizations globally and was named a Forrester Strong Performer in the SSPM Wave (2023) with the highest adoption scores in their category.

Their approach focuses on observability: monitoring what AI agents and users are doing inside SaaS applications, profiling behavior, and detecting anomalies. This positions them in the Observability & Auditing category rather than as a foundational identity and authorization provider.

Key Features and Capabilities

Obsidian's platform architecture centers on what they call a "Knowledge Graph" that correlates identity, activity, and threat data across SaaS environments. This knowledge graph powers several specialized capabilities:

SaaS Security Posture Management

Obsidian's original SSPM capabilities handle configuration drift remediation, automated compliance checks, and malicious integration identification. The platform discovers shadow SaaS applications, identifies excessive privileges (claiming to reduce over-permissioning by 90%), and provides supply chain defense against compromised third-party integrations. The Drift AI chat agent compromise that affected 700+ organizations exemplifies the type of supply chain attack Obsidian aims to prevent.

Identity Threat Detection and Response

The ITDR module focuses on OAuth token theft prevention, detecting compromised credentials, and monitoring suspicious access patterns. Obsidian performs real-time behavioral analysis to identify when legitimate credentials are being used maliciously, distinguishing between normal user activity and potential account takeover attempts.

AI Agent Monitoring

Launched in September 2025, Obsidian's AI agent security module extends their behavioral monitoring to autonomous agents.

The platform uses stateful analysis, retaining historical data to correlate current activity with past patterns. This contrasts with what Obsidian describes as competitors' stateless approaches that analyze events in isolation. Their self-learning AI model continuously adapts based on live customer threat signals, theoretically improving detection accuracy over time.

Deployment and Integration

Obsidian uses an agentless, API-based deployment model, connecting to SaaS applications through OAuth integrations. This allows rapid implementation without installing software on endpoints or within the SaaS applications themselves. The platform is available through AWS Marketplace.

How Obsidian Handles Agent Identity and Authorization

Obsidian's approach to agent security is fundamentally reactive rather than preventative. The platform monitors agents after they've already been granted access to SaaS applications, watching for suspicious behavior rather than controlling the authentication and authorization that grants that access in the first place.

Their Knowledge Graph correlates agent privileges with behavioral patterns, identifying when agents have excessive permissions or when their activity deviates from established baselines. If an agent begins accessing sensitive Slack channels it never touched before, or suddenly starts downloading large volumes of customer data from Salesforce, Obsidian's behavioral analysis should flag this as anomalous.

The prompt injection prevention works by analyzing prompts for malicious patterns before they reach the underlying LLM. Shadow AI discovery identifies when employees or agents are using unapproved AI tools that bypass enterprise controls. OAuth token theft detection watches for credential compromise that could give attackers agent-level access.

However, Obsidian doesn't provide the authentication infrastructure itself. Organizations using Obsidian still need separate solutions for SSO, MFA, directory sync, and identity management. Obsidian observes what happens after authentication, not during it. This observability-first approach creates a fundamental architecture gap: you need secure identity infrastructure before you can meaningfully monitor what identities are doing.

Pricing and Plans

Obsidian offers a freemium model with two tiers:

Free Plan: Supports up to 1,000 users and includes SaaS sprawl discovery, shadow AI detection, and spear phishing protection. This provides basic visibility into the SaaS ecosystem without the full SSPM, ITDR, and AI security capabilities.

Advanced Plan: Requires a custom quote and unlocks the complete platform including full SSPM, ITDR, and compliance automation. Pricing is based on organizational headcount rather than per-application, which can be advantageous for enterprises using many SaaS applications.

The company also offers their platform through AWS Marketplace for procurement convenience.

Comparing Approaches: Obsidian Security vs. WorkOS

What Obsidian Security Offers

Obsidian provides behavioral monitoring and anomaly detection for SaaS environments. Their Knowledge Graph approach tracks what agents and users do after they've authenticated, looking for suspicious patterns and policy violations. For large enterprises already using multiple SaaS applications and struggling with visibility into agent behavior, this observability layer identifies threats that traditional perimeter security misses.

The platform addresses real problems: excessive agent permissions, shadow AI proliferation, prompt injection risks, and OAuth token compromise. Their stateful analysis and self-learning AI model provide more context-aware threat detection than simple rule-based systems.

However, Obsidian's scope is limited to monitoring and alerting. They don't provide the authentication, SSO, directory sync, or user management that enterprises require before they can deploy agents safely. Organizations still need to implement enterprise identity infrastructure separately, then layer Obsidian on top for observability. This creates vendor sprawl, integration complexity, and gaps between authentication and monitoring.

Why WorkOS Is the Proven Choice

WorkOS provides the foundational authentication and authorization infrastructure that every B2B SaaS application requires. While Obsidian monitors what happens after authentication, WorkOS controls authentication itself—a fundamentally more critical security boundary.

Battle-Tested at Scale: WorkOS has proven reliability with enterprises requiring SOC 2, HIPAA, and GDPR compliance. Organizations trust WorkOS with their core identity infrastructure, not just monitoring layers. This production track record matters when authentication failures mean complete system compromise.

Comprehensive Platform: WorkOS delivers a complete authentication suite including SSO (SAML, OAuth, OpenID Connect), MFA, Directory Sync (SCIM), Admin Portal, and detailed audit logs. Enterprises get every authentication and user management feature their customers require, from a single vendor with unified APIs. Obsidian lacks all of these foundational capabilities—they monitor identity events, they don't manage identities.

Production-Ready Today: WorkOS is fully GA with no experimental features or beta flags. Every API is documented, supported, and covered by SLA. Teams integrate WorkOS and ship enterprise-ready authentication in hours, not weeks.

Enterprise Features Obsidian Lacks: Obsidian doesn't provide:

These aren't monitoring features—they're the core authentication capabilities that allow AI agents to operate securely in enterprise environments. Without them, you have no secure identity foundation to monitor.

Support That Matches Your Stakes: WorkOS offers 99.99% uptime SLA, dedicated support channels, and white-glove onboarding. When authentication is your foundation, you need vendor reliability that matches those stakes. WorkOS provides enterprise-grade support because authentication failures affect every user and every agent.

Developer Experience: WorkOS provides clean, well-documented APIs that developers can integrate in a single day. Authentication that took weeks to build in-house—handling SAML edge cases, SCIM provisioning, session management, MFA flows—ships with WorkOS in hours.

The Right Choice for Production AI Applications

For B2B SaaS companies building AI agents, WorkOS is the clear choice for authentication infrastructure. Enterprises require SSO, Directory Sync, and Admin Portals before they'll adopt your product. WorkOS delivers these capabilities today with proven reliability.

Obsidian's behavioral monitoring addresses a different problem: observability after authentication. For Fortune 1000 enterprises already operating complex SaaS environments and deploying AI agents at scale, Obsidian's anomaly detection provides additional security visibility. But that visibility only matters if you've built solid authentication infrastructure first.

If you're building a B2B SaaS product with AI agents, you need WorkOS's authentication foundation before you need Obsidian's monitoring layer. The authentication boundary is the critical security control point. Monitoring what happens after that boundary provides defense-in-depth, but it's secondary to controlling the boundary itself.

The bottom line: WorkOS is proven, production-ready authentication infrastructure that enterprises require. Obsidian is an observability platform for large enterprises that already have authentication infrastructure and want additional visibility into SaaS security posture.

Getting Started with Obsidian Security

Obsidian offers a free tier for organizations with up to 1,000 users, providing an easy entry point for teams wanting to experiment with SaaS security monitoring. The agentless, API-based deployment means implementation doesn't require installing agents on endpoints or within SaaS applications themselves.

Documentation quality appears solid based on their status as a Forrester Strong Performer, though implementation complexity will vary based on how many SaaS applications need integration. The knowledge graph approach requires time to establish behavioral baselines, so immediate value may be limited during the learning period.

For the Advanced Plan with full capabilities, Obsidian uses custom enterprise pricing requiring a sales engagement. Their reported 80% win rate in bake-offs suggests competitive pricing relative to alternatives in the SSPM/ITDR space like AppOmni, Adaptive Shield, and Netskope.

Final Thoughts

Obsidian Security has carved out a meaningful position in SaaS security, and their expansion into AI agent monitoring reflects legitimate enterprise concerns about autonomous agents accessing sensitive data. Their Knowledge Graph approach, stateful analysis, and behavioral profiling provide security teams with visibility that traditional perimeter defenses miss. For Fortune 1000 enterprises operating hundreds of SaaS applications, this observability layer identifies real threats.

However, observability is not authentication. Obsidian monitors what agents do after they've accessed your systems; they don't control how agents authenticate or what permissions they receive. For B2B SaaS companies building AI agents, WorkOS provides the foundational authentication infrastructure that every enterprise customer requires: SSO, Directory Sync, Admin Portals, MFA, and audit logs. These aren't monitoring features—they're the core capabilities that control access in the first place.

WorkOS is the proven, enterprise-ready choice for production authentication. The platform has a track record of reliability, comprehensive feature coverage, and developer experience that lets teams ship enterprise auth in hours. Organizations building AI agents need this authentication foundation before they can meaningfully monitor agent behavior.

Obsidian and similar observability platforms serve a valuable role in defense-in-depth strategies for large enterprises. But they're supplementary security layers, not authentication infrastructure. For teams building production AI applications that enterprises will trust, WorkOS provides the comprehensive, proven authentication platform that agents and users require.

Ready to build enterprise-grade authentication for your AI agents? Get started with WorkOS and ship SSO, Directory Sync, and Admin Portals in hours, not months. WorkOS provides the authentication foundation your AI agents need.