Key takeaways
The category: Network edge security management (NESM) is an emerging cybersecurity category pioneered by Huskeys that creates a unified intelligence layer over fragmented CDNs, WAFs, and multi-cloud environments.
The challenge: Non-human web traffic continues to grow as a share of total web traffic, driven by autonomous AI agents that require real-time validation without disruption.
The Okta synergy: Converging Okta’s identity intelligence with Huskeys’s edge controls helps enterprises distinguish legitimate agentic AI traffic from cyber threats, apply virtual patching in minutes, and optimize security without replacing existing infrastructure.
Each month, we highlight one of the founders of an Okta Ventures portfolio company. You’ll learn more about them and how they work with Okta. This month, we’re speaking with Itai Gafni of Huskeys.
What is network edge security management and what is Huskeys’s mission?
Huskeys is building network edge security management (NESM), a new security category for the modern network edge.
Today, every digital business depends on its network edge—it’s where customers, applications, revenue, and threats all meet. But that edge has become increasingly fragmented across content delivery networks (CDNs), web application firewalls (WAFs), cloud providers, and other security and network technologies that were never designed to work together. AI is driving another major shift, as autonomous agents become an increasing part of legitimate internet traffic, while attackers use the same AI to exploit vulnerabilities faster.
Our mission is to give organizations an intelligent management layer across this environment. Huskeys connects and orchestrates the security infrastructure companies already have, providing continuous visibility, intelligence, and control so they can understand what is happening across their network edge and adapt security in real time.
Ultimately, we want the network edge to work for the business, not against it—enabling organizations to improve security while protecting legitimate traffic, business continuity, and revenue.
What were you doing prior to Huskeys that led you to this moment?
My background has always been at the intersection of cybersecurity, data, and AI. I started in Unit 8200 on the cyber side, which gave me a strong technical foundation and early exposure to the challenges of protecting complex environments. I later became the AI lead in my department, responsible for exploring how we could use AI to improve cyber operations and make security teams more effective.
After that, I co-founded a company in the monitoring and observability space, where we focused on turning large volumes of signals and operational data into meaningful, actionable insights for the business. That experience shaped a lot of how I think about security today: the challenge isn’t necessarily a lack of data—it’s making all of it work together intelligently.
Later, working closely with organizations operating large-scale, internet-facing applications, I saw that same problem playing out at the network edge. Companies had invested heavily in CDNs, WAFs, cloud security, and other technologies, but the complexity of managing them often created friction with the business. When security controls generate too many false positives or become too difficult to operate, teams lose confidence in them and, in some cases, simply stop using their full capabilities.
At the same time, AI was beginning to fundamentally change both sides of the equation. Attackers could discover and exploit vulnerabilities faster, while AI agents were emerging as an entirely new class of legitimate internet traffic.
It became clear that improving individual security products wasn’t enough. The industry needed an intelligent management layer at the network edge that could enable the existing ecosystem to work together and continuously adapt to the business and the threat landscape.
That realization became the foundation for Huskeys.
What is Huskeys’s solution? What challenge does it solve?
Huskeys is building a network edge security management platform that sits above an organization’s existing edge infrastructure, turning a fragmented collection of traffic controls into one unified adaptive system.
Most enterprises today operate across multiple CDNs, WAFs, cloud providers, and network edge technologies. Each has its own data, policies, and controls, making it difficult for security teams to answer basic yet critical questions: Are our protections effective? Are policies consistent? Where are we exposed? And can we respond quickly without disrupting legitimate traffic?
Huskeys creates a common intelligence and control layer across these environments through our unified data model (UDM):
Continuous visibility: Normalizes information across providers so security teams can continuously assess posture, generate and adapt policies, and orchestrate enforcement
Real-time virtual patching: Reduces edge vulnerability exposure while permanent fixes are being developed
Agentic traffic control: Distinguishes legitimate autonomous AI interactions from malicious activity and apply the right controls without unnecessarily blocking businessne of the biggest emerging challenges at the edge—one of the biggest emerging challenges at the edge
The goal is simple: Make the infrastructure organizations already own work together intelligently, so they can respond faster, reduce risk and false positives, and protect business-critical applications without having to rip and replace their existing stack.
Why did Huskeys want to work with Okta?
Okta has always been a company we admired for redefining a critical security layer and building a category-defining platform. That journey resonates strongly with what we’re doing at Huskeys with network edge security management.
There is an important technological convergence happening between identity and the network edge. As AI agents become legitimate actors on the internet, the question is no longer only “Is this traffic malicious?” It increasingly becomes “Who—or what—is behind this interaction, what is it allowed to do, and how should the network respond?”
That creates a natural connection between identity intelligence and network intelligence, forming the ultimate trust layer for network traffic. Working with Okta gives us an opportunity to explore that intersection and build toward a future where organizations can better understand, manage, and secure both human and autonomous identities as they interact with applications across the internet.
Beyond the technology, Okta Ventures brings deep enterprise security expertise and an ecosystem that can help us as we build a new category and scale globally.
How is Huskeys working with Okta? What support do you look for in a corporate partner?
Our relationship with Okta goes beyond investment. We see a strategic opportunity to bring together intelligence from the identity and network layers, particularly as AI agents become a much larger part of internet activity.
As autonomous agents interact with applications on behalf of users and businesses, organizations will need to understand not just the traffic itself, but the identity and context behind it. By bringing those signals together, there is an opportunity to give customers a much richer understanding of agent behavior and apply more intelligent security controls at the edge.
Huskeys and Okta: A comprehensive trust architecture for AI-driven traffic
Security vector | Traditional focus | The AI and NESM era |
Primary actor | Human users with web browsers | Human users, autonomous AI agents |
Verification basis | Static IP, user credentials | Identity context + intent + behavioral analysis |
Network response | Static block/allow rules | Dynamic policy orchestration and virtual patching |
That is what we look for in a corporate partner: not simply capital or distribution, but shared conviction around where the market is going and an opportunity to create something valuable together.
Okta combines technical expertise, enterprise security experience, customer perspective, and a strong ecosystem. Those are especially valuable qualities for Huskeys as we establish network edge security management as a category and expand across the enterprise market.
What key trends are shaping network edge security?
We believe AI is driving one of the biggest transformations in network security in decades. Just as the industry has evolved how it approaches identity and endpoint security, the network—another fundamental security control—now needs to evolve for the AI era.
The rise of agentic traffic
The first major shift is agentic traffic. Increasingly, the entities interacting with applications won’t just be humans—they’ll be autonomous AI agents acting on behalf of people and businesses. That fundamentally changes the security model. Organizations will need to identify these agents, understand their identity, intent, and behavior, determine what they should be allowed to do, and distinguish legitimate autonomous activity from malicious traffic.
AI-accelerated vulnerability exploitation
At the same time, AI is transforming the attacker side of the equation. Vulnerabilities can now be discovered and exploited faster, dramatically shrinking the window in which organizations can respond. Waiting for a permanent fix is no longer enough. Security will need to become much more adaptive and operate closer to real time, using the network—one of the first lines of defense—to rapidly mitigate exposure and provide a safety net while permanent remediation is underway.
Shift from point solutions to management layers
Finally, the network itself will continue to become more distributed and complex. Adding another point solution every time a new challenge emerges isn’t sustainable. Organizations will increasingly need an intelligent management layer that works across vendors and makes their existing infrastructure operate as a single, coordinated system.
We see this evolution starting with the production network and internet-facing, north-south traffic, where customers, AI agents, applications, and threats intersect. Over time, we believe the same need for intelligence, orchestration, and adaptive control will extend deeper into the enterprise network and east-west traffic.
Together, these shifts are creating the need for network edge security management: an intelligent layer that continuously understands what is happening across the network, connects identity, traffic, and security context, and dynamically adapts protection as applications, users, agents, infrastructure, and threats evolve.
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