The RSAC cybersecurity conference is this week and for the last two years, the conversation at the event has revolved around generative artificial intelligence — that is, models we talk to, and they talked back and act as a copilot. At RSAC 2026, there has been a definite change in topic as the world has been shifting from conversational AI to agentic AI.
For years, the relationship between cybersecurity and business innovation has been a zero-sum game. Security teams were the “Department of No,” tasked with slowing down adoption to ensure safety. Given the business pressure to get artificial intelligence deployed, the security industry has been trying to flip this script by rethinking security along platform lines.
My year started off with a cornucopia of events – CES, the National Retail Federation show and the World Economic Forum in Davos — and though they’re three completely different events, there was one thread that cut across all of them: artificial intelligence. Like the internet did 30 years ago, AI will change the way we work, live, learn and play. However, also like the internet, AI will bring several new security threats, prompting organizations to rethink their cyber strategies.
Veeam Software Group GmbH today announced a definitive agreement to acquire Securiti Inc. for $1.725 billion, by far the largest purchase made by the company to date. Though Veeam has made many acquisitions under the tenure of Chief Executive Anand Eswaran (pictured), this is the first in the security market. As a data protection company, Veeam can be thought of as “security-adjacent,” but now squarely enters the artificial intelligence cybersecurity race.
Cisco Systems Inc. today announced its 8223 routing system, powered by its new Silicon One P200 chip — a new network system designed to unlock artificial intelligence’s potential through massive scale. Earlier this year, Nvidia Corp. introduced the concept of “scale-across” architectures as AI is now hitting the limits of a single data center. A “unit of compute” was once a server then evolved into a rack and then the entire data center.