AI security startup Penti thinks vibe coding needs a bodyguard – Refresh Miami

A few years ago, Miami cybersecurity startup Securily was helping companies prove they were secure enough to win enterprise business. Today, that same company has relaunched as Penti.ai, an AI-powered cybersecurity platform built for a world increasingly shaped by vibe coding, AI-generated software, and rapidly evolving cyber threats.

Founder and CEO Orit Benzaquen Cohen explained that the shift was far bigger than a name change. “What we did today with Penti – and that’s why the name is Penti for penetration testing AI – is that there are thousands of agents that run at the same time,” Benzaquen Cohen told Refresh Miami.

The company spent years combining manual ethical hacking with automated cybersecurity tools under the Securily brand. Along the way, the team recorded every penetration test they performed. That data eventually became the foundation for Penti’s new product: an agentic AI ethical hacker trained on thousands of real-world attack scenarios.

The platform continuously scans systems for vulnerabilities and helps engineering teams quickly reproduce and fix security issues. Benzaquen Cohen said that approach is becoming increasingly important as AI tools allow startups to launch products faster than ever before.

“It’s great that people are enabled with this tool that makes you think that anything you can think of, you can create,” she said about vibe coding. “Actually, you can. The question is, is it sustainable? Is it built with the right basis?”

She said many founders using AI coding tools may not fully understand the vulnerabilities hidden beneath the surface of AI-generated software: “You don’t know what you don’t know.”

That is where Penti hopes to fit in. Benzaquen Cohen believes cybersecurity can no longer rely on occasional manual testing when software changes constantly.

“In the past, we used to do a manual penetration test, and that’s a snapshot in time of today’s posture,” she said. “But what happens next week when your team ships something new to production?”

The company is still small, with a team of five including co-founder and CTO Cariel Cohen, but Benzaquen Cohen said momentum has started building since Penti’s launch last summer. While the startup has not raised outside funding yet, she said major brands have already started approaching the company directly.

“We’re starting to get household name brands coming through the door, not even us reaching out,” she said.

Benzaquen Cohen has also stepped into national conversations around AI policy. Earlier this month, Google invited her to Washington, D.C., to discuss AI regulation with policymakers, including staffers from the offices of former Senator Marco Rubio and Senator Ashley Moody.

She worries that fragmented state-by-state AI rules could slow down startups trying to scale AI products across the country. 

Still, she sees South Florida as an emerging center for AI innovation and believes the region is producing companies capable of competing nationally. “From my perspective, we’re the new Silicon Valley,” she said.

Benzaquen Cohen also pushed back against fears that AI will simply replace workers outright. Instead, she views it as another major technological shift that will reshape jobs rather than eliminate human value entirely.

“AI is not going to replace us,” she said. “If anything, it’s going to be here to enhance what we already do.”

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