Cyber resilience – Cohesity heralds new era in cybersecurity | #hacking | #cybersecurity | #infosec | #comptia | #pentest | #ransomware

Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming cybersecurity — escalating threats even as it opens a $2 trillion market opportunity. One company positioned to seize this moment is Cohesity Inc., which in December 2024 finalized its acquisition of Veritas Technologies LLC’s enterprise data protection business. The deal instantly elevated Cohesity’s scale and cemented its ambition to lead in AI-powered cyber resilience.

The timing is critical. Since generative AI platforms began proliferating in 2022, phishing and other AI-driven attacks have surged, intensifying pressure on enterprises to strengthen their defenses. Cohesity’s platform, built on AI-driven data security and management, is aimed squarely at this challenge.

By uniting its speed and innovation with Veritas’ global reach and customer base, Cohesity has quickly emerged as a new kind of powerhouse in cyber resilience. The company now protects hundreds of exabytes of data for more than 12,000 customers — including nearly 70% of the Global 500 — and posted pro forma revenue of $1.7 billion for fiscal year 2024.

“We … have 12,000 customers … 85% in the Fortune 100, 70% of the Global 500,” said Sanjay Poonen, chief executive officer and president of Cohesity, during an interview with theCUBE. “No one has that type of base and engineering investment — two times the number of engineering resources compared to our modern competitors. If we can compare the scale of Veritas and that customer base with the speed of Cohesity … it’s probably going to go down as one of the epic deals in our space ever.”

The combined organization is now recognized as the world’s largest data protection software provider by market share, with the transaction valuing the combined company at over $7 billion and targeting a total addressable market exceeding $40 billion, according to Cohesity.

“This landscape is evolving rapidly, driven by an increasing recognition of the critical need for robust cyber resilience among organizations of all sizes,” said theCUBE’s Christophe Bertrand in his analysis of the Veritas acquisition. “Given the rapidly evolving nature of cyber threats, Cohesity must invest in developing cutting-edge features that meet current market demands and anticipate future needs. Leveraging machine learning and AI will be critical.”

This feature is part of SiliconANGLE Media’s exploration of Cohesity’s market impact in cybersecurity and generative AI. (* Disclosure below.)

A bold move to combat vendor sprawl

Cohesity’s main product is its DataPlatform, hyperconverged software that enables companies to consolidate data workloads onto one cloud-native platform. Additionally, the company’s Helios SaaS management tool creates a dashboard for DataPlatform sites on-premises and in the cloud.

Consolidation and simplicity have long eluded much of the security industry, with vendor sprawl being a consistent challenge, according to SiliconANGLE analysts. Reasons include the constantly changing cyberattack landscape and the fact that ransomware attackers can be more willing to work together than cybersecurity firms.

“Incident response and cyber resiliency is a team effort,” explained James Blake, vice president of cyber resiliency strategy at Cohesity, in a conversation with theCUBE. “Business continuity and disaster recovery, just bringing back the last snapshot, brings back the vulnerabilities. It brings back the persistence mechanisms and all the gaps or evasions in your controls.”

The consolidation of Cohesity and Veritas enterprise data protection business pushes back against the ongoing proliferation of cybersecurity technologies. The company also founded the Data Security Alliance with partners such as Splunk Inc. and Zscaler Inc. to create an interoperable united front, and the move is strengthening its partnership with Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co.

The market opportunity for cybersecurity service providers is due, in part, to gen AI’s potential. The total cost of cybercrime doubled from 2015 to 2023, suggesting that the market will continue to grow. IDC estimates the data replication and protection software market at $12.3 billion in projected vendor sales for 2024 — offering ample growth potential for the combined entity’s $40+ billion TAM.

“This merger [between Cohesity and Veritas] is more than just a combination of two companies; it represents a strategic, unique alignment of strengths to address the growing needs of the market,” said theCUBE’s John Furrier. “According to insiders, the deal is expected to increase the opportunity for the new entity to make a significant leap in their market positioning.”

Since Veritas was more profitable than Cohesity, the consolidation has indeed grown Cohesity’s position in the marketplace. Veritas also has a larger data pool, which has enhanced Cohesity’s work in gen AI. Cohesity had already launched Gaia, a generative‑AI-enabled search assistant, before the merger. Post-acquisition, this platform’s capabilities were extended — now supporting a broader array of data sources.

Cyber resilience: Staying ahead of current security trends

The cybersecurity market has seen a shift from traditional cybersecurity business continuity and disaster recovery to cyber-resilience, along with an increase in AI-powered security software. Ransomware attacks can’t be treated like IT disruptions, according to Blake, because this approach will leave the victims more vulnerable to reinfection as the ransomware’s affiliates repeatedly attack. Cohesity helps customers focus not just on restoring operations, but also on actively investigating and mitigating attacks.

“Organizations typically do not consider the assets and resources that they need to be able to respond and recover from the incident,” Blake told theCUBE. “What they don’t consider is, ‘What do I need to have in place in order to do investigation and the mitigation of threats in those platforms so that I can bring them back securely?’”

Cohesity’s Data Cloud has a clean room design environment, as well as a “digital jump bag,” an immutable, vaulted storage area with the essential security tools for overcoming an attack. The company’s disaster-recovery-as-a-service, announced in 2019, allows customers to use Amazon Web Services Inc. as a recovery location. Interoperability and collaboration with other partners are key to Cohesity’s value as a data management platform.

“If you can’t access or log in to your business applications because your network or your identification tools have been affected, then there’s no business,” Blake explained. “You need to have this collaboration between security teams and infrastructure teams across the board.”

Cyber attackers are increasingly using AI, leading to a massive increase in phishing attacks. In response, cybersecurity firms have also begun incorporating AI into their defense strategy. Cohesity’s Data Cloud now uses AI to detect and address threats, including Gaia, an AI-powered cyber recovery assistant or “guided incident response wizard.”

“With Gaia, we enable customers to have conversations with their data and to actually ask intelligent questions,” said Chris Klosterman, alliances field chief technology officer at Cohesity, in an interview with theCUBE. “Things in a healthcare setting, like asking a question, ‘Has any patient confidential data been sent outside the organization?’ That’s a very vague question, but if you can answer that, that’s really powerful.”

(* Disclosure: Cohesity sponsors content on theCUBE. Sponsors have no editorial influence over theCUBE or SiliconANGLE coverage.)

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