VectorCertain LLC today released validation results demonstrating its SecureAgent platform's ability to detect and prevent AI-powered credential theft before execution. The testing, part of the MYTHOS Threat Intelligence Series, covered 1,000 adversarial scenarios across seven sub-categories of credential theft, including HSM key extraction, SWIFT token compromise, and bulk credential harvesting. SecureAgent achieved 100% recall, stopping all 839 credential theft attempts with zero false negatives.
Credential theft remains the leading initial access vector in cybersecurity, according to the Verizon 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report, which analyzed over 22,000 security incidents. Stolen credentials were involved in 22% of all breaches and 88% of web application attacks. The financial sector faces the highest stakes, with an average breach cost of $5.56 million, as reported by Help Net Security.
VectorCertain's testing simulated AI agents executing credential theft autonomously, targeting sensitive assets like Hardware Security Modules (HSMs) and SWIFT tokens. Traditional endpoint detection and response (EDR) systems fail structurally against such attacks because they lack credential-operation context and detect theft only after exfiltration. The MITRE ATT&CK ER7 evaluation confirmed 0% identity attack protection across all nine evaluated vendors, highlighting the gap SecureAgent fills.
SecureAgent's five-layer governance pipeline evaluated each action before the credential entered the AI agent's context window. Gate 1 classified actions targeting credential infrastructure as suspect, Gate 2 detected bulk harvesting patterns via trust score anomalies, and subsequent gates confirmed malicious intent with high confidence. The entire process completed in under 10 milliseconds, and the credential never left the governed environment.
The validation included 143 scenarios for HSM key extraction, 143 for SWIFT token compromise, and 178 for credential forwarding and exfiltration. In each case, SecureAgent blocked the attempt. The platform also maintained a 97.5% specificity rate, with only four false positives across 1,000 scenarios—all involving legitimate credential rotation operations that correctly triggered human review.
VectorCertain's founder and CEO Joseph P. Conroy emphasized the significance of the results, noting that credential theft underpins major financial crimes like the Bangladesh Bank heist and the UNC6395 OAuth attack, which compromised over 700 organizations. The company's technology is protected by a 55-patent portfolio and has achieved conformance with the CRI Financial Services AI Risk Management Framework across all 230 control objectives.
As AI agents become more capable, the threat of autonomous credential harvesting grows. VectorCertain's validation provides a proven method to prevent such theft before it results in financial loss. The company offers a free External Exposure Report to help organizations identify credential exposure risks.
