The cybersecurity perimeter has moved — and for many organizations, it has moved faster than their defenses. At RSA Conference 2026, Cohesity Global Field CISO Dr. Joye Purser will be making the case that protecting enterprise data today means defending across identity systems, AI agent infrastructure, cloud environments, and the growing blind spots created by shadow AI. In this exclusive VMblog pre-show Q&A, Purser unpacks how Cohesity’s “Resilience Everywhere” strategy addresses the full spectrum of modern threats, from AI-powered social engineering targeting Active Directory to the new recovery challenges posed by autonomous agents touching real systems and real data.
What emerges from the conversation is a portrait of a threat environment increasingly shaped by geopolitical tension and machine-speed adversaries — one where detection alone is no longer sufficient. Cohesity’s answer is a unified platform that connects protection, response, and clean recovery across every layer of the enterprise. Attendees can find the company at Booth N-6271 and the Cohesity Resilience Den at One Yerba Buena, with additional programming including a CISO dinner and an “Eggs & Hash” breakfast for security leaders throughout the week.
++
VMblog: Give VMblog readers a quick overview of your company and its core mission.
Dr. Joye Purser: Cohesity is the leader in AI-powered data security, with a mission to protect, secure, and provide insights into the world’s data. That is critically important because data underpins everything organizations are trying to do, from day-to-day operations and business continuity to AI adoption.
VMblog: Where can attendees find you at RSA 2026? What’s your booth number, and what kind of experience can visitors expect when they stop by?
Purser: Attendees can find Cohesity at Booth N-6271 at RSAC 2026. The booth experience is designed to connect security and IT teams to the outcomes they depend on for protecting and securing their organizations’ data. We have organized the conversations and demos around the idea of “Resilience Everywhere.” That requires detecting threats quickly, strengthening incident response, and delivering clean, swift recovery across Security and IT.
There will also be additional programming in the Cohesity Resilience Den across the street from Moscone at One Yerba Buena. Throughout the week we will host additional smaller gatherings for security leaders, including a CISO dinner with Cohesity CEO Sanjay Poonen and Semperis CEO Mickey Bresman, as well as an “Eggs & Hash” breakfast celebrating the Defender Divas and Risk Reduction Reinas of our field.
VMblog: What is your message to RSA attendees coming out to the show this year?
Purser: The main message Cohesity wants RSAC attendees to leave with is that resilience must keep up with the pace of AI-driven change. The World Economic Forum has noted that AI and information processing are expected to affect 86 percent of businesses by 2030, so this is becoming the norm, not an edge case.
Cohesity research also revealed that 81 percent of organizations say AI initiatives are moving faster than their risk tolerance. That is the AI paradox. Organizations want the speed and value AI can deliver, but they do not want to create new risk faster than they can manage it.
Cohesity’s concept of Resilience Everywhere is about accelerating resilience across AI, cloud, and identity, so organizations can identify issues earlier, respond with less friction, and recover cleanly if something goes wrong. That allows organizations to adopt AI with greater confidence instead of slowing innovation out of fear of disruption.
VMblog: What were your key learnings from 2025’s security landscape, and how have those insights shaped your solutions for 2026?
Purser: One of the clearest takeaways from 2025 is that cyberattacks are no longer isolated events. They are fast-moving disruptions that can create ripple effects. Cohesity research found that destructive cyberattacks are frequently forcing financial course corrections, including budget reallocations and legal or regulatory consequences.
Our research also uncovered a “confidence capability gap.” Many security decision makers say they feel ready, but real incidents often show gaps in coordination between security and IT, infrequent testing, and recovery plans that are not designed for destructive attacks.
For 2026, detection remains important, but the ultimate goal is being able to respond decisively and recover to a clean, trusted state. That requires validating recovery points, reducing reinfection risk, and making response and recovery repeatable so teams can execute under pressure.
As the cyber threat environment increasingly mirrors global conflicts, with geopolitical tensions contributing to more coordinated and disruptive attacks, Cohesity continues to strengthen its cyber resilience leadership with new security innovations and partnerships to ensure customers can withstand incidents and rapidly restore critical systems and data.
VMblog: How is your company addressing the intersection of generative AI and cybersecurity – both defending against AI-powered attacks and leveraging AI agents for security operations?
Purser: Generative AI is changing security in a very practical way. Sensitive data is being accessed, copied, and reused across more tools and workflows than most organizations were built to govern. At the same time, adversaries are adopting automation and AI-driven approaches to scale their campaigns faster and with more precision. That combination increases both exposure and speed of impact.
The first step is visibility and control over sensitive data. If teams cannot see where sensitive data lives and how it is being accessed, it is hard to reduce exposure or prioritize what matters. Discovery and classification are foundational for this very reason, especially as AI use expands across cloud and SaaS environments.
The second shift is operational. When automation runs at machine speed, detection alone is not enough. Response and recovery need to be connected, with workflows that help teams investigate swiftly and restore cleanly without bringing risk back online. Cohesity’s Enterprise AI Resilience strategy addresses this with an emphasis on confident recovery.
VMblog: With the proliferation of AI agents and autonomous systems in enterprise environments, how is your solution addressing the security challenges of agentic AI?
Purser: Cohesity’s Enterprise AI Resilience strategy is very much aimed at helping organizations adopt AI agents confidently by extending resilience across the AI ecosystem, not just traditional workloads. As agents move from experiments into production, they start touching real systems and real data, and that introduces a new kind of risk. Changes can spread rapidly, and the blast radius can be hard to contain.
Cohesity concentrates on three areas of defense. First, we protect the AI and agent infrastructure that organizations increasingly rely on, including agent memory, vector databases, model configurations and policies, training and fine-tuning datasets, and core enterprise data stores. Second, we help teams recover from rogue, unintended, or malicious agent actions by preserving immutable snapshots and enabling coordinated point in time recovery across the systems and data an agent touched. Third, we support safer AI adoption by activating trusted enterprise data with governance and recoverability built in.
VMblog: What sets your solution apart in today’s crowded cybersecurity marketplace? Why should RSA attendees prioritize visiting your booth?
Purser: At the heart of our differentiation is the Cohesity Data Cloud, a unified platform designed to protect, secure, and unlock insights from enterprise data. That platform also serves as the foundation for Cohesity’s Five-Step Cyber Resilience Framework for companies and governments.
At RSAC 2026, we will be showcasing capabilities across this framework, including Cohesity Identity Resilience, powered by Semperis, Cohesity FortKnox for data isolation and recovery, threat protection with Google Threat Intelligence and sandbox analysis, cyber recovery orchestration with Cohesity RecoveryAgent, and Cohesity Data Security Posture Management (DSPM), powered by Cyera.
The most important thing we can do for customers is ensure strong protection and security across every layer and environment. That means bringing together the strongest capabilities available through a best-in-breed ecosystem. This also applies to our Enterprise AI Resilience strategy, where we are pursuing deep partnership and integration with the best in the AI, security, and management world.
VMblog: With identity now firmly established as the new perimeter, how does your solution address identity threats, including deepfakes and AI-powered social engineering?
Purser: Cohesity Identity Resilience, powered by Semperis, addresses these threats by protecting and hardening the identity systems attackers target most—Active Directory and Microsoft Entra ID.
The solution proactively scans for indicators of exposure, risky configurations, and attack paths to privileged assets, helping organizations reduce the likelihood that credential abuse turns into full identity compromise. If an attack does occur, secure immutable backups, automated malware‑free recovery, and specialized identity forensics ensure Active Directory is restored to a clean, trusted state. This combination of prevention, rapid recovery, and post‑attack validation helps organizations stay resilient even as identity‑based attacks become more AI‑enabled and harder to detect.
VMblog: How does your platform help organizations manage the security implications of shadow AI and unauthorized generative AI tool usage by employees?
Purser: Shadow AI is usually a data exposure problem before it becomes a security event. Sensitive information gets copied into tools outside governance, and teams lose visibility into where data is going, who can access it, and what controls are in place. Reducing this risk starts with knowing where sensitive data lives across cloud and SaaS environments and being able to prioritize remediation based on exposure.
This is where Cohesity DSPM, powered by Cyera, fits. It supports continuous discovery and classification of sensitive data, monitors access patterns, and helps prioritize remediation so exposure can be reduced. It also connects to recovery readiness, because teams need both prevention and the ability to respond quickly if misuse or exposure occurs.
VMblog: Are you participating in any speaking sessions or panel discussions at RSA 2026? Can you tell us more about these presentations?
Purser: Cohesity will present “The Defender’s Guide to Identity Resilience” in the North Briefing Center Theater on Tuesday, March 24 at 1:40 pm. The session will cover Active Directory attacker techniques, early detection, attack path blocking, and rapid restoration of identity systems to a clean, trusted state.
##
