AI vs. AI: How Cybersecurity Giants Are Redefining Defense
Key Highlights
- Artificial intelligence (AI) and GenAI present a dual challenge by dramatically increasing the volume and sophistication of cyber threats.
- Urgency created by advanced threats is colliding with macroeconomic caution that slows enterprise technology spending. But vendors remain optimistic about growth, citing positive earnings and high projections.
- Cybersecurity vendor strategy focuses on platform consolidation and AI-first defense, including building AI into security solutions and shifting focus toward proactive, preemptive defense.
- The digitization of manufacturing is fueling high growth in converged IT/OT security solutions for industrial firms.
The increasing adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) is fundamentally reshaping the commercial and industrial landscape. This technological shift, combined with a growing reliance on cloud, edge, and hybrid architectures, is generating unprecedented user demand for compute capacity and robust security solutions. Recent earnings calls from cybersecurity vendors reveal a proactive response to these trends and a positive outlook about the potential of AI.
Cybersecurity faces two competing forces: a surge in highly sophisticated threats and macroeconomic caution slowing down cybersecurity spending by industrial and commercial enterprises. AI and Generative AI (GenAI) are powerful tools for threat actors and have spurred a dramatic increase in both the volume and sophistication of cyberthreats.
While vendors outlined the dangers of AI, they were also bullish on using AI-driven security solutions as part of their strategy to fight attacks.
Matthew Prince, Co-Founder, Co-Chairman & CEO of Cloudflare, expressed excitement about the possibilities of AI that reflects the general sentiment of other cybersecurity providers.
“I have no doubt that there’s going to be kind of ups and downs in AI over the coming months and years,” Prince said. “But it’s clear to me that there is something very, very real here—that it is going to be transformative, that a lot of inference will run on your handset or your driverless car directly there, but that if it can't run there, it needs to run somewhere else. The next best place for it to run is in the network.”
The security market is also increasingly being influenced by vendor ecosystem lock-in strategies, where customers become dependent on one vendor’s solutions, making it difficult to switch to competitors. More IT leaders are favoring vendors that offer unified, integrated security platforms that simplify management across their entire architectural footprint, leading to strategic consolidation among both providers and customers.
Vendor Earnings Reflect Trends, Customer Needs
Many vendors reported positive earnings as they also projected revenue growth stemming from increased customer needs, including the strong movement toward platform consolidation.
Check Point Software’s Q3 revenue grew by 7% compared to Q2, driven by the rising demand across its entire portfolio and its focus on AI. “We also advanced our AI First strategy through the October acquisition of Lakera, strengthening our position to deliver a comprehensive, full-stack AI-powered security platform and expand our leadership in next-generation cyber defense,” said Nadav Zafrir, CEO.
Cyberark, which was recently acquired by Palto Alto Networks, reported a 16% Y-o-Y increase in Q3 revenue and cited robust demand. Matt Cohen, CyberArk CEO, credited “the proliferation of privilege across human identities, the exponential rise of machine identities, and the emerging need to secure agentic AI” as drivers for their positive earnings results.
Tenable raised 2025 revenue guidance to up to $992 million as users accelerate exposure management adoption. The cybersecurity company exceeded all Q3 guided metrics for Q3, including 11% Y-o-Y revenue growth and 23% operating margin.
The company’s Co-CEO Stephen Vintz pointed to a “fundamental shift in cybersecurity away from detection and response technologies and more toward a more preventative and preemptive approach,” driven by AI advancements changing the threat landscape. He highlighted strong growth from Tenable One, with the platform representing about 40% of new business during Q3 and 437 new enterprise platform customers.
We are in the very first innings of the most impactful technological revolution of our lifetime.
- —Nadav Zafrir, CEO, Check Point Software
On the earnings call, he also announced the launch of Tenable AI Exposure, designed to give CISOs visibility into generative AI risks.
Similarly, Sumedh Thakar, Qualsys President and CEO, highlighted the company’s transition from attack surface management to risk surface management, emphasizing the integration of Agentic AI-powered risk management and automated remediation. He said Qualys is “pioneering the first Agentic AI Risk Operations Center, ROC, a new category in cybersecurity designed to centralize an organization's response to threats before they impact the business.”
On Qualsys’ Q3 earnings call, management reported solid revenue growth and profitability, with revenues of $169.9 million. International growth outpaced domestic, with 15% growth outside the U.S. and 7% in the U.S. Thakar cited increased adoption of the firm’s ETM (Enterprise TruRisk Management) solution, which processes several petabytes of data daily and supports AI-human collaboration in real-time threat response.
Vendor Strategies Adapt to User Activities
Industrial and commercial organizations are increasing their reliance on AI/ML tools, which, combined with API sprawl and the rapid deployment of cloud-native applications, exposes them to new vulnerabilities. As a result, the cloud security segment is now the fastest-growing area for vendors.
To counter these threats, vendors are enabling AI copilots, autonomous Security Operations Center (SOC) tools, and behavior-based detection capabilities across their platforms. Cybersecurity companies are also expanding into crucial preventive areas such attack surface management, continuous threat exposure management (CTEM), and automated posture remediation.
Providers such as Palo Alto Networks, Check Point Software, and Microsoft are pushing single-pane-of-glass architectures that offer centralized visibility into various information and data sources so IT leaders can form a comprehensive picture for unified detection and response. Vendors like CrowdStrike and Zscaler are executing platforms to meet the increasing demand for cloud and hybrid security solutions.
“Our strategy continues to be anchored in four core principles that we believe define the foundation of a modern cybersecurity stack, shaped predominantly by the accelerating adoption of AI,” explained Check Point Software’s CEO Nadav Zafrir when describing the firm’s strategy during the vendor’s Q3 earnings call. He said those principles are securing the evolving connectivity fabric; a prevention-first approach; an open platform philosophy; and prioritizing AI security.
“As attackers leverage sophisticated Agentic capabilities, it's imperative that we dramatically improve the signal-to-noise ratio and limit our reliance on detection to a minimum,” Zafrir added.
Over at Cloudflare, Matthew Prince, Co-Founder, Co-Chairman & CEO, noted, “Even though we're excited about AI and AI inference, it is still a relatively de minimis portion of our overall revenue, growing fast, but not—I don't see any current concentration risk that's there.”
Similarly, Fortinet has been emphasizing its integrated FortiOS operating system across its Secure Networking offerings and more than 30 security functions.
A parallel trend is emerging among manufacturers, producers, and other industrial firms, who are moving toward converged IT/OT security and network segmentation. As industrial digitization accelerates, the need for threat detection suitable for legacy industrial architectures is creating a new, high-growth area.
Economic Headwinds Don’t Tamper Optimism
Despite the critical necessity of advanced security, enterprise spending remains sensitive to global economic slowdown, macroeconomic challenges, and geopolitical tensions, which are causing some organizations to delay investments in large, costly technology products. This cautious spending persists even though security remains a top priority for CIOs.
Check Point Software’s Zafir reflected the sentiments of many vendors on all their earnings calls.
“Securing AI is top priority,” he explained. “We are in the very first innings of the most impactful technological revolution of our lifetime. Moving from current phase of human enhancement to replacement and delegation to the next phase of crossover where sophisticated agents are taking over and crossing lanes. It’s exhilarating but also extremely challenging. And I think it’s a race for relevance for everyone.”
About the Author
Theresa Houck
Contributor
Theresa Houck is an award-winning B2B journalist with more than 35 years of experience covering industrial markets, strategy, policy, and economic trends. As Senior Editor at EndeavorB2B, she writes about IT, OT, AI, manufacturing, industrial automation, cybersecurity, energy, data centers, healthcare, and more. In her previous role, she served for 20 years as Executive Editor of The Journal From Rockwell Automation magazine, leading editorial strategy, content development, and multimedia production including videos, webinars, eBooks, newsletters, and the award-winning podcast “Automation Chat.” She also collaborated with teams on social media strategy, sales initiatives, and new product development.
Before joining EndeavorB2B, she was an Industry Analyst at Wolters Kluwer in its human resources book publishing operation. Before that, she spent 14 years with the Fabricators & Manufacturers Association, Intl., serving as Executive Editor of four magazines in the sheet metal forming and fabricating sector, where she managed and executed editorial strategy, budgets, marketing, book publishing, and circulation operations, and negotiated vendor contracts.
Houck holds a Master of Arts in Communications from the University of Illinois Springfield and a Bachelor of Arts in English from Western Illinois University.
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