Cloud security replatforming reshapes defenses – News

Cloud security is undergoing a major upheaval as companies respond to the dual forces of AI disruption and rapidly growing system complexity. Enterprises are no longer simply adding new tools; they are being forced to rethink their entire security foundations to survive in a multicloud, AI-driven world.

In this week’s theCUBE Pod episode, theCUBE Research’s John Furrier (pictured, left) and Dave Vellante (right) discuss how this dramatic replatforming is changing everything from vendor relationships to internal security priorities. As geopolitical tensions rise and cyberattack volume soars, organizations are re-architecting their infrastructure around cloud-native models, agentic software and simplified workflows that can better withstand the relentless pressure. The industry conversation has moved from adding capabilities to fundamentally remaking them.

“If you look at specifically security, the money coming out of the market’s going to be coming from the data,” Furrier said. “It’s hyped up. But practical AI is working. The intent to do AI is 50%. There’s a pocket of innovation where people are applying agents in areas that are moving into production, but it’s not like the shiny new toy … it’s about survival through simplification.”

Cloud security replatforming: A new era of enterprise transformation

There is a massive shift underway across the security landscape: a move toward cloud-native platforms, ecosystem-based partnerships and agent-driven automation that fundamentally alters how enterprises defend themselves, according to Furrier, something highlighted at this week’s RSAC. Rather than layering new solutions on outdated infrastructure, organizations are actively replatforming in search of resilience and agility.

“RSA is essentially seeing the security change,” Furrier said. ”A massive shift is happening and now impacting security. I call it the big security replatforming movement, and that’s what’s happening. We’re going to see all kinds of things.”

Several forces are converging to drive this replatforming momentum. Kubernetes has become critical for setting up new data layers, while the explosion of AI model innovation is reshaping application development and security needs. Companies such as Wiz Inc. are rewriting their platforms at speed to compete with traditional players, and vendors such as Palo Alto Networks Inc. are aggressively adapting to keep pace, according to Vellante.

“We know AWS has great security, but the reason they don’t show up is because people aren’t spending a ton on AWS security. They’re spending a ton on AWS, which has built-in security,” he said. “They don’t monetize security the same way that Microsoft does. The same way that Google is trying to do with the Mandiant and the Wiz Acquisition. They’ve got to obviously monetize those.”

The future of security lies in how effectively enterprises can rebuild their systems to handle this new complexity. Legacy systems are struggling under the weight of massive cloud sprawl, growing API vulnerabilities and highly dynamic AI workloads. Simplification and intelligent orchestration are becoming more important than chasing the latest flashy tool or promise.

“Cloud security is still king,” Furrier said. “Multicloud specifically is [an] infrastructure issue. That’s why I think security is very practical. Agents over AI, practical wins there. The security stack is consolidating, and gen AI concerns are there. Those are the top four buckets I’m going to be putting content into.”

New threats, agentic strategies and the future of cloud security

During the conversation, Vellante recalled a recent interview with Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, where Benioff discussed the future of software as a service and cloud platforms. The exchange highlighted his belief in platformization and hinted at the growing role of agents and marketplaces — ideas that continue shaping today’s enterprise tech landscape.

“We talked about the integration of apps and data cloud. We talked about Agentforce, we talked about how he thinks about the ecosystem,” Vellante said about their conversation. “We threw out the concept that they could potentially become the fourth hyperscaler, but software only. To my mind, [Benioff is] very clearly putting a big bear hug around data platforms like Snowflake and Databricks saying, ‘Hey guys, we’re all friends,’ but I think they have an opportunity to suck in a lot of data to [federate] it.”

The replatforming of cloud security is also a response to new and evolving threats. The traditional pillars of identity protection and endpoint security are no longer sufficient on their own. Security priorities are shifting toward exposure management, posture automation and intelligent workflow resilience to proactively counter threats, according to Furrier.

“Security priorities are shifting from identity and endpoint to exposure, posture and automation,” Furrier explained. “CISOs aren’t shopping for new tools; they’re replatforming. This is the big story in my opinion.”

This shift is not just about adopting new tools but about rethinking architecture at a deep level. AI-driven security agents, posture management platforms and adaptive orchestration systems are beginning to replace static defense mechanisms. Enterprises are also being forced to simplify their vendor ecosystems in order to operate at speed without becoming overwhelmed by complexity, Furrier added.

“You’re going to start to see managed services be the tell sign of where things go because of multicloud, because of supercloud, because of the complexity, because of the vendor consolidation,” he said. “You’re going to see that really be an indicator.”

Watch the full podcast below to find out why these industry pros were mentioned:

Erik Bradley, chief strategist and director of research at ETR
Tom Georgens, former CEO of NetApp
Tod Nielsen, cloud platform veteran
Jay Chaudhry, founder and CEO of Zscaler
Nir Zuk, founder and CTO of Palo Alto Networks
Jon Oltsik, principal analyst for cybersecurity at News
Nikesh Arora, chairman and CEO of Palo Alto Networks
Matt Garman, CEO of AWS
Dustin Kirkland, VP of engineering at Chainguard
Lip-Bu Tan, CEO of Intel
Donald Trump, 45th and 47th president of the United States of America
Tim Cook, CEO of Apple
Teresa Carlson, president of General Catalyst
John Mack, founder of Life Calling
Marc Benioff, chair and CEO of Salesforce
George Gilbert, principal analyst at theCUBE Research
Steve Jobs, co-founder and former CEO and chairman of Apple
Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla

Here’s the full episode of this week’s theCUBE Pod:

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Photo: News