Cohesity has announced the completion of its merger with Veritas’ enterprise data protection business, ushering in a new era in protecting the world’s data. Now the world’s largest data protection software provider by market share, Cohesity will serve over 12,000 customers – including over 85 of the Fortune 100 and nearly 70% of the Global 500 – and protect hundreds of exabytes of the world’s data. With the completion of this merger, Cohesity now offers the broadest workload support and one of the largest partner ecosystems in the data protection industry.

Cohesity has become the fastest data protection company to cross $1.5 billion in revenue, reaching that milestone in 11 years. On a pro forma adjusted basis for the fiscal year ending July 2024, the combined entity had revenue of over $1.7 billion, annual recurring revenue (ARR) of $1.5 billion, and a 28 per cent adjusted cash EBITDA margin.

“This is a major milestone in the 11-year history of Cohesity, whose mission is to protect, secure, and provide insights into the world’s data,” said Sanjay Poonen, President and CEO, Cohesity. “By combining Cohesity’s scale-out architecture and strong generative AI and security capabilities with Veritas’ broad workload support and extensive global footprint, our customers and partners stand to gain more value from their data than ever. As promised, we will honour our “no customer left behind” commitment, supporting existing products from both companies for years to come. As we begin this new chapter, we are committed to driving industry-leading cyber resilience innovations to ensure we are the world’s preeminent choice for data security with differentiated AI capabilities.”

“We want to congratulate Cohesity on completing their Veritas acquisition. NVIDIA is excited to partner with Cohesity as they build their GenAI products on top of the NVIDIA AI Enterprise,” said Jensen Huang, founder and CEO of NVIDIA. “Cohesity is backing up and protecting the world’s data – a goldmine of business value that customers can unlock with GenAI.”

“Bringing together Cohesity and Veritas’ data protection business – the largest deal in the data protection space to date – addresses the growing need in the market to go beyond backing up and recovering data to handle issues around data security and insights for more robust cyber resilience,” said Daniel Newman, CEO, The Futurum Group. “Cohesity now has the largest workload support with world-class security and insight capabilities, a large presence, and a massive joint ecosystem of service providers, VARs, SI partners, and OEMs. Sitting in a unique position at the junction of multi-cloud, security, and AI, Cohesity is on an ambitious growth trajectory, with an experienced leader in Sanjay at the helm. We believe the company will be a key player as they expand beyond data protection, helping global CIOs exploit the potential for AI and turn organizational data into a competitive advantage.”

The combination of Cohesity with Veritas’ data protection business provides:

• Industry-leading Innovation and Capabilities: The combined company will offer cloud-scale and AI-powered data security and management, Generative AI-driven insights, an easy-to-use management interface, and a comprehensive multi-cloud data protection portfolio. Cohesity now supports the broadest range of workloads within a highly scalable modern architecture.
• Peace of Mind for Current Customer Investments: For years to come, Cohesity will continue to invest in and advance the roadmap and strategy for all products brought from both companies into the new combined portfolio. This includes all existing Cohesity products and services and all the Veritas solutions covered by the combination agreement, including Veritas NetBackup, Veritas NetBackup appliances, and Veritas Alta data protection offerings.
• Global Scale and Support: With an industry-leading Net Promoter Score and a global go-to-market footprint, Cohesity now supports a combined global, “follow-the-sun” customer success organization. Cohesity is committed to helping enterprises succeed by consistently providing positive outcomes for customers’ support experience and needs.
• Advanced AI Capabilities: Patent-pending, first-to-market AI capabilities offer customers tremendous data management, protection, and resiliency benefits and help them gain more significant insights and create value for the whole company from their data.
• Strong Partner Ecosystem: The combined company brings together one of the industry’s largest partner ecosystems, covering cloud service providers, security players, VARs, system integrators, MSPs, technology ecosystem partners, distribution partners, and hardware OEMs.

Cohesity will target a total addressable market (TAM) of $40+ billion, which includes IDC’s data replication and protection software market. IDC’s’ Semiannual Software Tracker, 2024H1, estimates the data replication and protection software market to be $12.3 billion in projected vendor sales in 2024. The expanded go-to-market breadth, geographic footprint, and R&D resources will allow the combined company to accelerate new customer adoption and help drive the deployment of innovative solutions within the fast-growing data security and management segment. The transaction values the combined company at over $7 billion.

The combined company received support from current marquee investors, including Sequoia Capital, Softbank Vision Fund I, Wing Venture Capital, Premji Invest, and Madrona. The Carlyle Group, through its ownership of Veritas, is now one of the largest shareholders in the combined company. The transaction was funded by a Series H investment round led by Haveli Investments, which provided the majority of equity in the transaction and is now one of Cohesity’s largest shareholders. Coatue, Sapphire Ventures, and Dragon Fund were also key investors in the Series H investment round. This robust backing ensures the financial and operating resources essential for propelling the company’s growth, extending its global presence, and driving continued product innovation.

“We are thrilled to lead Cohesity’s latest investment round to fund this transformative transaction,” said Brian Sheth, CIO of Haveli Investments. “This combination creates a new data protection and cyber-resiliency powerhouse. We expect the resulting scale and combined resources to accelerate product innovation, extending Cohesity’s product leadership. I look forward to serving on Cohesity’s Board of Directors and working closely with Sanjay and the management team as we focus on taking Cohesity’s business to a new level of success.”

J.P. Morgan Securities LLC served as Cohesity’s exclusive M&A financial advisor, and JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., arranged and committed financing for the transaction. BofA Securities, Inc. also served as financial advisor to Cohesity. Simpson Thacher and Bartlett LLP and Gunderson Dettmer LLP served as primary legal advisors to Cohesity. Guggenheim Securities and Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC acted as financial advisors to Veritas. Alston & Bird LLP, Latham & Watkins LLP, and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz served as Veritas’ primary legal advisors for the transaction.

Forcepoint has announced Rick Hanson has joined the company as President of Go-to-Market. In this newly created role reporting directly to CEO Ryan Windham, Hanson unifies the company’s Sales and Customer Success teams, amplifying Forcepoint’s commitment to helping enterprises and governments secure their most critical data with its Data Security Everywhere architecture.

As data continues to spread across hybrid environments and generative AI introduces new risks, organizations face mounting challenges in protecting sensitive information and intellectual property. Forcepoint’s Data Security Everywhere solutions offer unmatched visibility and control across all stages of the data security lifecycle, from discovery and classification to prioritization, monitoring and protection. By unifying security policies and leveraging AI-powered automation, Forcepoint enables customers to secure their data wherever it resides—on the web, in the cloud, or across devices—while simplifying compliance with rapidly evolving regulations.

“Our customers count on Forcepoint to simplify the complexity of securing their most valuable data,” said Ryan Windham, CEO of Forcepoint. “Bringing together Sales and Customer Success under Rick’s leadership will help us deliver even greater value, ensuring that every customer meets their security objectives and gains a strategic edge in their digital and AI transformations. Rick’s extensive expertise and mission-driven focus make him the perfect fit to ensure every customer realizes success as a milestone and a continuous journey.”

As President of Go-to-Market, Hanson will be responsible for scaling global go-to-market teams, driving strategies that align with customer needs and solidifying a customer-first culture focused on world-class service and support, execution agility and continuous improvement.

Hanson brings over 30 years of leadership experience and two decades as a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP). Most recently, he served as President at Delinea, where he spearheaded global go-to-market strategies across sales, marketing, customer success, and professional services. His previous roles include Chief Revenue Officer at Brightcove with executive positions at CA Technologies, Hewlett-Packard, Symantec, and RSA. Hanson began his career in the U.S. Air Force and later served as IT Director for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, gaining deep expertise in cryptography and secure IT operations.

“Forcepoint has always been ahead of the curve, pioneering data loss prevention (DLP) and redefining how organizations approach data security,” said Hanson. “What excites me most is how Forcepoint’s Data Security Everywhere architecture allows businesses to protect their data comprehensively while empowering their people to work productively anywhere. By unifying policies and automating visibility, classification and protection at scale, we’re transforming data security from a pain point into a business enabler. I’m proud to be joining a team that’s not just leading the market but reshaping what’s possible in cybersecurity.”

Positive Technologies has released an in-depth report examining the potential use of artificial intelligence in cyberattacks. According to the report, AI could eventually be used by attackers across all tactics outlined in the MITRE ATT&CK matrix and in 59% of its techniques. Researchers note that previously, AI was used by cybercriminals in only 5% of all the MITRE ATT&CK techniques, while in another 17%, its use was proven feasible. However, with the rapid proliferation of legal AI tools, these numbers are expected to surge. Experts highlight that within a year of ChatGPT-4’s release, the number of phishing attacks increased by 1,265%, and they predict AI will continue to enhance the capabilities of cybercriminals.

Analysts believe that, amidst the rapid development of such technologies, developers of language models don’t do enough to protect LLMs from being misused by hackers generating malicious texts, code, or instructions. This oversight could contribute to a surge in cybercrime. For example, hackers are already using AI to write scripts and verify code when developing malicious software. Moreover, LLMs enable novice cybercriminals, who lack advanced skills or resources, to accelerate the preparation and simplify the execution of attacks. This, in turn, contributes to the rise in AI-driven incidents. For instance, a cybercriminal can use AI to double-check for overlooked details in their attack plan or to explore alternative methods for executing specific steps.

Experts point to other factors driving the increased use of AI in cyberattacks. Among them is the weak cybersecurity infrastructure in developing countries, where even imperfect tools can be used effectively with the support of AI. Additionally, the ongoing arms race between attackers and defenders is pushing cybercriminals to use AI.

Roman Reznikov, Information Security Research Analyst at Positive Technologies, commented, “The advanced capabilities of AI in cyberattacks are no reason to panic. Instead, we must remain realistic, study emerging technologies, and focus on building result-driven cybersecurity strategies. The most logical way to counter AI-driven attacks is by leveraging even more efficient AI-powered defence tools, which can address the shortage of specialists by automating many processes. In response to the growing activity of cybercriminals, we developed the MaxPatrol O2 autopilot, designed to automatically detect and block attacker actions within the infrastructure before they can inflict irreparable damage on an organization.”

Experts note that cybercriminals are already using AI to automatically generate malicious code snippets, phishing messages, and deepfakes, as well as to automate various stages of cyberattacks, including botnet administration. However, only experienced hackers currently have the skills to develop and create new AI-driven tools to automate and scale cyberattacks. Analysts predict that specialized modules will emerge in the near future to address specific tasks in well-known attack scenarios. Over time, these AI-driven tools and modules will likely merge into clusters, thereby automating attack stages and eventually covering most of them. If cybercriminals succeed in fully automating attacks on a specific target, the next logical step could be enabling AI to autonomously search for new targets.

To ensure personal and corporate cybersecurity, Positive Technologies recommends following general security rules, prioritizing vulnerability management, and participating in bug bounty programs. Experts warn that the use of machine learning to automate vulnerability exploitation will enable cybercriminals to target organizations more quickly and frequently. Promptly addressing any detected flaws is crucial, particularly when publicly available exploits exist.

To stay ahead of cybercriminals, vendors are increasingly integrating machine learning technologies into their products. For instance, MaxPatrol SIEM uses its Behavioral Anomaly Detection (BAD) component to assign risk scores to cybersecurity events and detect targeted cyberattacks, including those exploiting zero-day vulnerabilities. Similarly, the PT Application Firewall uses AI for the precise detection of shell upload attacks. MaxPatrol VM leverages AI for intelligent asset information searches and the creation of popular queries. PT NAD employs AI to generate custom profiling rules and detect applications within encrypted traffic. Finally, PT Sandbox uses AI for the advanced detection of unknown and anomalous malware.