Jason Buffington .com

I am looking “forward” (pun intended) to @Rubrik’s event this week. @Bipul recently declared “Cybersecurity is dead. Hello, Agentic Cyber Resilience,” which we’ll likely hear from main stage. No doubt this conference will focus on the intersection of cybersecurity, AI, and backup (we still need backups). I’ll be listening to how those main stage promises show up in the breakouts and the mealtime conversations. It ought to be a good week.

video transcript

I am looking “forward” (pun intended) to Rubrik’s event this week.

Why? Because I used to underestimate Rubrik. I was with a different analyst firm back then, covering a very mature data protection market. Then Rubrik came along, with a different architecture and different methodologies; it didn’t look like all the other backup stacks … but it did have a cloud control plane that other vendors were starting to figure out was the inevitable future and were trying to retrofit.

Then they said “We’re not a backup company; we’re a security company” and a lot of folks (me included) rolled their eyes. Eventually the industry caught up: cyber resilience is built on the foundation of backup, but requires a security-centric mindset to remediate against modern threats. Those threats evolved from encryption and exfiltration to identity as the new battlefront … and then came AI; not just as another workload to protect, but as an exponential accelerant to both the threat landscape AND remediation.

Rubrik’s current tagline is the “Security and AI Operations Company.” Bipul recently declared “Cybersecurity is dead. Hello, Agentic Cyber Resilience,” which we’ll likely hear from main stage. That’s a bold claim, so I’ll be listening for how it resonates in the breakouts and among attendee conversations during meals … because my guess is that the entire conference will focus not just on cybersecurity, or AI, or backup (we still need backups), but on the intersection points; and whether those intersections deliver within the feature set or just the marketing slides.

To be clear, lots of vendors that used to be called backup, then DR, then BC/DR, are now talking about resilience, and just about everyone is talking about AI. As important as it is, some folks are reluctant to talk about ‘backups’ – they’re boring and it sounds ‘legacy.’ But in reality, it’s never been about ‘backup’; it’s always been about the data. To assure that, our industry has figured out that cybersecurity defines the landscape; from how protection integrates with prevention to how we ensure clean restores. Rubrik isn’t alone in seeing that. But they were early, so am looking ‘forward’ to hearing where they think we go from here.

It ought to be a good week … leave your thoughts below.