Latest news with #CharlotteAI
Yahoo
19 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
PANW's AI Threat Defense Expands: Will Protect AI be the Game Changer?
Palo Alto Networks (PANW) is tackling emerging risks as enterprises race to adopt artificial intelligence (AI). Complex AI ecosystems, which include AI models, agents, APIs, and third-party tools, are creating vulnerabilities like model manipulation, data poisoning, and prompt injection attacks. Traditional security tools aren't designed to secure AI systems end-to-end, making full lifecycle protection a growing priority for PANW's customers. Most recently, Palo Alto Networks completed its $700 million acquisition of Protect AI, which aims to solve these very challenges. Management sees this as a key step to becoming the go-to provider for securing AI workloads. With Protect AI, PANW is expanding its AI security coverage from development to deployment. Protect AI brings tools that scan AI models, manage their posture, test them for vulnerabilities (red teaming), and provide runtime protection. These capabilities will now strengthen PANW's Prisma AI-Ready Security (Prisma AIRS) platform. Prisma AIRS is designed to give enterprises visibility and control over their AI assets across hybrid and multi-cloud environments. Just weeks after launch, Prisma AIRS has already built an eight-figure sales pipeline. With AI infrastructure spending projected to exceed $300 billion in the next 12 months, Palo Alto Networks sees this as a key opportunity. Prisma AIRS, supported by the planned Protect AI integration, could become a foundational element of Palo Alto Networks' platform strategy and play a key role in helping the company meet its long-term target of $15 billion in annual recurring revenues by fiscal 2030. The Zacks Consensus Estimate for fiscal 2025 and 2026 indicates that Palo Alto Networks' revenues will grow in the mid-teen percentage range. The consensus mark for fiscal 2025 and 2026 revenues is pegged at $9.19 billion and $10.45 billion, respectively. How Competitors Fare Against PANW Competitors like CrowdStrike (CRWD) and SentinelOne (S) are also gaining ground through platform expansion and AI innovation. CrowdStrike is positioning Charlotte AI as a key part of its competitive advantage in delivering automated and scalable cybersecurity. In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, CRWD expanded Charlotte AI's detection triage. This enables Charlotte AI to deliver autonomous expert-level triage, reasoning and response at machine speed. This is shaping Charlotte AI to be a strong differentiator for CrowdStrike in automated security. Though comparatively a small competitor, SentinelOne in the first quarter of fiscal 2026 posted year-over-year growth of 24% in its ARR. The growth was fueled by the rising adoption of SentinelOne's AI-first Singularity platform and Purple AI. PANW's Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates Shares of Palo Alto Networks have gained 9.3% year to date compared with the Security industry's growth of 20%. PANW YTD Price Return Performance Image Source: Zacks Investment Research From a valuation standpoint, Palo Alto Networks trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 12.59X, lower than the industry's average of 14.31X. PANW Forward 12-Month P/S Ratio Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The Zacks Consensus Estimate for PANW's fiscal 2025 and 2026 earnings implies year-over-year growth of 15.14% and 11.27%, respectively. The estimates for fiscal 2025 have remained unchanged over the past 60 days, while the estimates for fiscal 2026 have been revised downward by a penny over the past 30 days. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Palo Alto Networks currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report SentinelOne, Inc. (S) : Free Stock Analysis Report Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (PANW) : Free Stock Analysis Report CrowdStrike (CRWD) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research ( Zacks Investment Research Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
CRWD Bets on Agentic AI Security: Will it Unlock Next Growth Phase?
CrowdStrike CRWD is strengthening its focus on agentic AI security as enterprises adopt artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) technologies. These AI agents act autonomously and at machine speed, which creates unique security risks, all the while increasing the size, severity, and speed of cyber aims to become a protector of autonomous AI agents, and to support its vision, it recently expanded its offerings through a deeper partnership with Amazon Web Services ('AWS'). In July 2025, it launched falcon-mcp and AI Red Team Services in the AWS falcon-mcp, CrowdStrike aims to deliver a standardized, open protocol that connects AI agents and large language model (LLM) applications to CrowdStrike's Falcon telemetry. It allows enterprises to integrate AI workflows securely into their existing operations. The falcon-mcp provides users with plug-and-play access to Falcon data, where organizations can securely build agentic workflows and gain visibility into detections, incidents, threat intelligence, and behavioral AI Red Team Services provides organizations with security assessments to test and strengthen their GenAI systems. These services identify vulnerabilities and misconfigurations aimed at preventing potential data breaches, offering actionable recommendations to strengthen both AI models and support the infrastructure that organizations rely on. Charlotte AI is also key to CrowdStrike's agentic AI security vision. In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, CrowdStrike expanded Charlotte AI's detection triage, which now enables Charlotte AI to deliver autonomous expert-level triage, reasoning and response at machine speed. With enterprises accelerating AI adoption, these tools enable CrowdStrike to help customers build, deploy, and secure agentic AI workflows, positioning CrowdStrike as an essential layer of security for the AI-driven enterprise. The company's sustained focus on expanding its product portfolio is expected to continue driving its top-line growth. The Zacks Consensus Estimate of $4.78 billion for fiscal 2026 revenues indicates year-over-year growth of 20.9%. How Competitors Fare Against CRWD Competitors like Palo Alto Networks PANW and SentinelOne S are also gaining ground through platform expansion and AI innovation. In the third quarter of fiscal 2025, Palo Alto Networks saw robust growth in its AI-driven XSIAM platform. The growth was driven by increased customer adoption of PANW's advanced cybersecurity offerings, including its AI-driven XSIAM platform, which saw annual recurring revenue (ARR) growth of more than 200% year over comparatively a small competitor, SentinelOne posted year-over-year growth of 24% in its ARR. The growth was fueled by the rising adoption of SentinelOne's AI-first Singularity platform and Purple AI. CRWD's Price Performance, Valuation and Estimates Shares of CrowdStrike have gained 40.8% year to date compared with the Security industry's growth of 20.1%. CRWD YTD Price Return Performance Image Source: Zacks Investment Research From a valuation standpoint, CrowdStrike trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 22.82X, way higher than the industry's average of 14.33X. CRWD Forward 12-Month P/S Ratio Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CRWD's fiscal 2026 earnings implies a year-over-year decline of 10.94%, while for fiscal 2027 earnings indicates year-over-year growth of 34.68%. The estimates for fiscal 2026 and 2027 have been revised upward in the past 60 days. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research CrowdStrike currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report SentinelOne, Inc. (S) : Free Stock Analysis Report Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (PANW) : Free Stock Analysis Report CrowdStrike (CRWD) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research ( Zacks Investment Research
Yahoo
16-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Will Platform Strategy Keep Driving CrowdStrike's Subscription Growth?
CrowdStrike CRWD is seeing strong momentum from its platform strategy, which is playing a key role in driving subscription revenue growth. In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, subscription revenues grew 20% year over year to $1.05 billion, making up 95% of total revenues. This growth is fueled by the rising adoption of Falcon Flex, CrowdStrike's subscription model designed to accelerate multi-module deployment and platform standardization. By the end of the first quarter, more than 820 customer accounts had adopted Falcon Flex. Total account deal value reached $3.2 billion within two years of launch, up 31% sequentially and over six times year over year. This trend supports strong multi-module adoption. At the end of the first quarter, module adoption rates were 48% for customers who were using six or more modules, 32% for seven or more, while 22% customers adopted eight or more modules. This shows that the platform approach is helping customers simplify their security tools and expand spending with instance, a Fortune 100 technology company grew its initial $12 million three-year Endpoint Detection and Response contract to a five-year $100 million-plus Falcon Flex agreement covering multiple modules. Another customer, a global healthcare provider, expanded with Falcon Identity Protection as part of an eight-figure deal using Charlotte AI and Next-Gen Security Information and Event Management. These trends suggest that platform consolidation, accelerated by Falcon Flex and strong multi-module adoption, is a major factor behind CrowdStrike's subscription revenue growth. Management expects these drivers to remain crucial to its growth strategy in the coming quarters. The Zacks Consensus Estimate indicates subscription revenues to soar by 21.2% year over year to $4.56 billion in fiscal 2026. Competitors like Zscaler ZS and SentinelOne S are also gaining ground through platform expansion and artificial intelligence innovation. Zscaler ended its third quarter of fiscal 2025 with $2.9 billion in ARR, reflecting 23% year-over-year growth. The robust growth was driven by Z-Flex and rapid traction across Zscaler's three strategic growth pillars, which include Zero Trust Everywhere, Data Security Everywhere and Agentic comparatively a small competitor, SentinelOne's ARR is also growing rapidly with reaching $948 million at the end of the first quarter of fiscal 2026. This represents year-over-year growth of 24%, fueled by the rising adoption of SentinelOne's AI-first Singularity platform and Purple AI. Shares of CrowdStrike have gained 39.2% year to date compared with the Security industry's growth of 17.1%. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research From a valuation standpoint, CrowdStrike trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 22.64X, way higher than the industry's average of 14.01X. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The Zacks Consensus Estimate for CRWD's fiscal 2026 earnings implies a year-over-year decline of 10.94%, while for fiscal 2027 earnings implies year-over-year growth of 34.68%. The estimates for fiscal 2026 and 2027 have been revised upward in the past 60 days. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research CrowdStrike currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report SentinelOne, Inc. (S) : Free Stock Analysis Report Zscaler, Inc. (ZS) : Free Stock Analysis Report CrowdStrike (CRWD) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research ( Zacks Investment Research Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Techday NZ
30-06-2025
- Business
- Techday NZ
AI agents revolutionise business & cybersecurity with automation
The integration of artificial intelligence (AI) agents into business and cybersecurity operations is rapidly shifting from experimental trials to real-world deployment, as organisations across sectors seek to harness the power of automation, efficiency, and data-driven decision-making. Recent commentary from senior technology leaders underscores both the gains and the challenges facing enterprises as they embed AI agents into core processes. In the realm of cybersecurity, the accelerating sophistication of threats driven by AI is a growing concern. Fabio Fratucello, Field Chief Technology Officer World Wide for CrowdStrike, highlights that malicious actors are increasingly using AI, including large language models (LLMs), to launch more convincing phishing scams, business email compromise, and social engineering attacks. "AI is lowering the barrier to entry for adversaries, allowing them to automate social engineering, misinformation campaigns, and credential harvesting at unprecedented speed and scale," Fratucello notes, citing findings from CrowdStrike's 2025 Global Threat Report. This surge in AI-powered attacks is amplifying the pressure on security teams, already hampered by overwhelming alert volumes and a shortage of skilled analysts. According to Fratucello, the key to regaining the upper hand lies in deploying AI-enabled tools that automate detection and triage of threats. CrowdStrike's Charlotte AI, for instance, uses machine learning to validate and prioritise security alerts with more than 98% accuracy. By automating repetitive tasks, Charlotte AI reportedly saves security teams up to 40 hours per week, enabling them to concentrate on proactively hunting advanced threats and halting breaches before escalation. Importantly, Charlotte AI operates within a "bounded autonomy framework," allowing organisations to set specific parameters for automated decision-making. Analysts retain control by defining thresholds and determining when human review is required, ensuring that the balance between automation and human oversight is maintained. Fratucello stresses, "This combination of machine speed and human-defined guardrails returns the AI advantage to defenders and ensures organisations can operate at the speed of threats." Elsewhere in the enterprise technology space, companies are contending with the challenge of bringing AI agents out of the prototype lab and into large-scale, reliable production. Nick Eayrs, Vice President, Field Engineering, APJ, at Databricks, observes that while enthusiasm for AI agents is high, moving beyond proof-of-concept still eludes many organisations. "The challenge is not just building them – it is making them scalable, efficient and reliable enough to stand up in the real world," Eayrs explains. Too often, businesses rely on trial-and-error approaches and are forced into trade-offs between operating costs and performance, which undermines the requirements of enterprise-grade use cases. In response, Databricks has launched Agent Bricks, a system designed to streamline AI agent creation using real enterprise data. Agent Bricks deploys automated evaluation benches, generates synthetic data, and leverages custom judges to test agent quality and efficiency. This reduces the manual, repetitive work typically involved in agent development, freeing AI engineers to focus on higher-value tasks. Eayrs says that common industry uses of such AI agents already include structured information extraction, knowledge assistance, customised data transformation, and multi-agent orchestration. "Ultimately, it is about building production-grade AI agents that are useful, reliable and ready for deployment — that is what we are focused on," he adds. The potential benefits of AI agents are also being demonstrated at the customer coalface. At the property services company hipages Group, AI agents have transformed backend operations. Jeremy Burton, Chief Technology Officer, reports that the introduction of Agentforce has reduced lead response time by 60% and automated verification processes, dramatically speeding up license and registration checks for tradespeople. "Agentforce and Data Cloud are now a core part of our ecosystem, helping us connect better with our customers and tradies," he states. By bringing disparate data and customer touchpoints onto a unified platform, hipages has streamlined work for staff and improved satisfaction levels for both customers and end users. Hospitality firm Urban Rest has leveraged Agentforce to scale up its service operations in step with rapid growth. Jeff Baars, Chief Commercial Officer, explains that Agentforce's centralised knowledge base provides round-the-clock self-serve support for guests, enabling the business to operate without on-site staff across 800 properties in four countries. This has increased productivity by 50% for the operations team, while anticipated field service visits have dropped by up to 40%. Baars notes, "Agentforce empowers our guests with instant, self-serve access to everything they need to know about their apartment, freeing up our guest relations team to focus on support that requires a human touch." At Kudosity, an AI agent named 'Emily' now handles up to 40% of general customer support queries, ensuring prompt responses and reducing the workload for support staff. When a query is too complex, Emily refers it to a human agent, preserving personalised service where it matters most. The evolving landscape of AI agents in the real world demonstrates the transformative potential of the technology, balanced by the need for systematic deployment, human oversight, and ongoing adaptation to rapid changes in both business and cybersecurity domains. As enterprise adoption accelerates, the focus is squarely on building reliable, scalable, and human-aligned AI agents that deliver tangible benefits across sectors.
Yahoo
25-06-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
PANW's Prisma AIRS: Does it Give an Edge in AI Model Security?
Palo Alto Networks PANW is doubling down on artificial intelligence (AI) model security at just the right time. With enterprises racing to adopt AI, the risks tied to unsecured models, like data leaks or tampering, are becoming serious challenges. That's where Prisma AI-Ready Security (Prisma AIRS), launched in April 2025, comes in handy. The tool aims to protect AI models from build to deployment, offering visibility, control, and safeguards across hybrid and multi-cloud Alto Networks has integrated Prisma AIRS into its Prisma Cloud platform, positioning AI model security as part of overall cloud protection, rather than a separate, complex layer. Given that traditional security tools often miss AI-specific threats, this move feels both timely and the third quarter of fiscal 2025, management emphasised rising customer demand for securing AI deployments. Palo Alto Networks is already using more than 35 AI models across multiple products, each requiring constant scanning and protection. The management explained that these AI artifacts need to be discovered, tested, and safeguarded, which is precisely what Prisma AIRS is built to do. Prisma AIRS also extends Palo Alto Networks' existing capabilities in posture management and runtime security, and will add security for AI agents in the future. The pending acquisition of Protect AI is likely to further bolster Prisma AIRS' capabilities. The company intends to integrate Protect AI's capabilities into its Prisma AIRS platform to provide comprehensive AI security across the entire AI development weeks after launch, Prisma AIRS has already built an eight-figure sales pipeline. With AI infrastructure spending projected to exceed $300 billion in the next 12 months, Palo Alto Networks sees this as a key opportunity. Prisma AIRS, supported by the planned Protect AI integration, could become a foundational element of Palo Alto Networks' platform strategy and play a key role in helping the company meet its long-term target of $15 billion in annual recurring revenues by fiscal 2030. Competitors like CrowdStrike CRWD and SentinelOne S are also gaining ground through platform expansion and AI innovation. CrowdStrike is positioning Charlotte AI as a key part of its competitive advantage in delivering automated and scalable cybersecurity. In the first quarter of fiscal 2026, CRWD expanded Charlotte AI's detection triage. This enables Charlotte AI to deliver autonomous expert-level triage, reasoning and response at machine speed. This is shaping Charlotte AI to be a strong differentiator for CrowdStrike in automated comparatively a small competitor, SentinelOne posted year-over-year growth of 24% in its ARR. The growth was fueled by the rising adoption of SentinelOne's AI-first Singularity platform and Purple AI. Shares of Palo Alto Networks have gained 11.8% year to date compared with the Security industry's growth of 20.3%. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research From a valuation standpoint, Palo Alto Networks trades at a forward price-to-sales ratio of 12.86X, lower than the industry's average of 14.5X. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research The Zacks Consensus Estimate for PANW's fiscal 2025 and 2026 earnings implies year-over-year growth of 15.14% and 11.12%, respectively. The estimates for fiscal 2025 and 2026 have been revised upward in the past 60 days and 30 days, respectively. Image Source: Zacks Investment Research Palo Alto Networks currently carries a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold). You can see the complete list of today's Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here. Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report SentinelOne, Inc. (S) : Free Stock Analysis Report Palo Alto Networks, Inc. (PANW) : Free Stock Analysis Report CrowdStrike (CRWD) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research ( Zacks Investment Research Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
