AI-Driven Security Platform Outperforms Traditional Penetration Testing in Speed and Accuracy

Arun Singh, Chief Information Security Officer at Tyro Payments, compared traditional penetration testing with Aikido’s AI-driven security platform, finding that Aikido completed a pentest in 5.5 hours—identifying 30 issues (9 high-severity)—while human testers took 15 days and found only 5 issues (1 high). Tyro, which secures data for 80,000 Australian merchants, previously struggled with decentralized vulnerability management tools, high false positives, and alert fatigue, leading to unaddressed backlogs. Aikido improved efficiency by analyzing source code contextually, reducing false positives, and streamlining remediation workflows, contrasting with tools like Snyk, Checkmarx, and CrowdStrike’s application security posture management. The platform also enhanced supply chain security by detecting overlooked dependencies, such as an Axios breach risk, and identified blind spots like malicious VS Code extensions during red teaming exercises. A hybrid model combining AI pentesting with human review was adopted for future assessments, reducing costs while improving developer-security team collaboration. The proof of concept for a new health product revealed additional vulnerabilities, reinforcing Aikido’s role in early remediation.