PrefactorvsZenity

Zenity finds and secures your agents. Prefactor knows if they are doing their jobs.

One finds shadow agents and flags injection or leakage, the other evaluates each outcome for quality, cost, and approved scope, so they sit at different layers.[1]

support-agent v4 · one run, two layersexample
Illustrative run, showing what each layer tells you
Zenitysees
fetch_customer212ms · 1.2k tok
apply_refund1.4s · 3.1k tok
send_reply340ms · 0.8k tok
trace recorded, no verdict
Prefactoradds
Did its job✓ yes
Quality84 / 100
Cost$0.42 · in budget
Drift vs baselinenone
a run that breaches its schema is held for review
§01 / THE SHORT ANSWERtl;dr: which, and when
TL;DR

Zenity is the security layer for deployed agents: shadow discovery, threat detection, and posture management. Prefactor evaluates each run's outcome: quality per agent and version, drift after a change, and cost. A secure agent can still return the wrong answer, so many teams run both.

The short answer

Zenity or Prefactor, in one table

Decision factorZenityPrefactor
Where it fitsSecuring the agent against attacksKnowing the agent did its job in production
Primary questionIs this agent being attacked or misused?Did this agent produce the right outcome, at what cost?
Threat modelAdversarial: someone misusing the agentOperational: drift and scope creep, no attacker required
What you getThreat detection and response across agentsA quality score per run, drift detection, and cost per agent
How it attachesSecurity monitoring across your agent estateNative SDK, core SDK, or OpenTelemetry ingest, no rebuild, no gateway in the request path
Use them together?Watch for attacks with ZenityEvaluate the work with Prefactor
§02 / HONEST CONTRASTscope: different jobs
Honest contrast

What each one is for

What Zenity does well
  • Shadow agent discovery: finds agents across SaaS, cloud, and endpoint environments, including ones nobody registered.
  • Runtime threat detection: prompt injection, data leakage, and over-permissioned behaviour, flagged as it happens.
  • Security posture management: aligned to OWASP LLM Top 10, MITRE ATLAS, and NIST AI RMF.
  • Incident correlation: agent-level correlation and intent-focused threat analysis for a security team to act on.
  • Recognition: Gartner Cool Vendor 2025 in Agentic AI TRiSM, with Fortune 500 customers.

Best for security teams that need to detect and respond to threats across their deployed agents.

What Prefactor does
  • Evaluates every run for outcome quality, cost, and whether the agent stayed in its approved scope.
  • A quality score per agent tracked across versions, so a regression shows up as a trend rather than a surprise.
  • Drift detection when behaviour shifts after a model update or a prompt edit, before a user hits it.
  • Holds or escalates a risky action for review before it reaches a user, not after, once a score or scope check crosses a threshold.
  • One record across frameworks: agents evaluated from the same place, with an audit trail for each decision.

Best for teams running agents in production who need to know each one is doing its job, and prove it.

§03 / CAPABILITY MATRIXside by side: what each covers
Side by side

Side by side, security versus evaluation

CapabilityZenityPrefactor
Securing the agent
Shadow agent discovery
Runtime threat detection (prompt injection, data leakage)
Security posture management (OWASP, MITRE ATLAS)
Evaluating agents in production
Quality score per run
Cost attributed per agent and version
Drift detection against a baseline
Hold or escalate a risky action before a user is affectedOn threat signalsOn quality and scope signals
Across your stack
Evaluates agents built on any framework
One queryable record per agent
Audit trail for a decisionFor security incidents
§04 / THE QUALITY GAPour take: where it stops
Our take

Where security stops: whether the agent did its job

We sell the layer this section describes. Read it with that in mind.

Zenity answers whether an agent is under attack or acting outside its permissions, and it does that work well. It does not say whether the agent did its job, at acceptable quality and cost, with evidence you can show.

01
A verdict on every run

Each run is measured against the agent's job, and the quality score is tracked per agent across versions.

02
Drift caught after a change

When behaviour shifts after a model update or a prompt edit, Prefactor flags it.

03
A hold before the user

When a score or a scope check crosses a threshold, Prefactor can hold or escalate the action before a user is affected.

04
Evidence you can hand over

Every decision keeps a record you can give to a customer or an auditor. Prefactor reads the traces you already emit, through a native SDK or any OpenTelemetry source, so it runs alongside Zenity rather than replacing it.

See it on your own agents

A working session on a fleet like yours: watch a run evaluated, catch a drift, walk the record.

§05 / WHICH TO PICKdecide: by your stack
Which to pick

Which one fits

Reach for Zenity when

  • Your priority is detecting attacks and misuse across deployed agents.
  • A security team owns the agent estate and needs threat response.
  • Shadow agents and over-permissioned behaviour are the immediate risk.

Reach for Prefactor when

  • Agents are doing real work for real users and quality matters per run.
  • You need a quality score per agent and version, not just a threat alert.
  • A regression after a prompt or model change has to surface before a user hits it.
  • Someone asks you to prove an agent did its job.
§06 / HOW WE REVIEWEDsources: checked March 19, 2026
Methodology

How we reviewed this comparison

Reviewed against public product and documentation pages on March 19, 2026. If a vendor has changed a feature, product name, or positioning since then, send a correction and we will update it. Numbered source links in the page body point to the ordered sources below.

Sources reviewed

  1. Zenity homepage
Prefactor context

Methodology

  • Reviewed public product, documentation, and launch material visible at the time of writing.
  • Mapped each page to the primary buyer, control layer, and runtime capabilities each vendor describes publicly.
  • Prefer direct product and documentation pages over analyst summaries or reseller material.
§07 / QUESTIONSfaq: the common ones
Questions
Does Prefactor replace Zenity?
No. Zenity secures agents against attacks and misuse; Prefactor judges the outcome of each run once they are live. They sit at different layers, and many regulated teams run both.
Can Prefactor detect prompt injection?
Not as a dedicated defence. Prefactor's scope checks flag when an agent acts outside its approved boundaries, which can catch some anomalous behaviour, but purpose-built prompt injection and jailbreak detection is Zenity's job.
What does Prefactor do that Zenity does not?
Prefactor puts a quality score on every run, tracks it per agent across versions, and flags drift after a change. Zenity assesses agents through a security lens and has no view of whether an agent completed its task correctly or at what cost.
Does Prefactor work with agents Zenity already monitors?
Yes. Prefactor reads the traces an agent already emits, through a native SDK or OpenTelemetry ingest, and builds its record of each run from those. There is no rebuild and no gateway in the request path, so it sits alongside Zenity.
Which team buys Prefactor?
The team responsible for whether agents deliver, usually the people running agents in production. Zenity is typically owned by a security team, so the two buyers and budgets rarely overlap.
Reviewed against public sources on March 19, 2026Suggest a correction

Find out if your agents are doing their jobs

Book a demo and we will evaluate a live agent on a fleet like yours: quality per run, drift after a change, and cost per agent.

Agent Performance Platform
Unified performance platform for agents, authentication, and risk management
All Systems Operational
3Global Agents
7Instances
5Services
12%Human Intervene
4High Risk
$2,360Monthly Spend
Mission ControlLive agent health with 7-day activity heartbeat
Claims Proc...68
$330/moRed
Claims Proc...65
$160/moRed
Claims Proc...82
$170/moAmber
ChatGPT74
$150/moAmber

See how every agent performs, and make it better

Prefactor helps teams observe, evaluate, and improve their AI agents in production, across every framework and provider.