Cohesity boosts AI-ready data security & sovereignty

Cohesity has rolled out updates across its data protection and security products, adding new sovereign cloud partnerships, expanding threat detection, and introducing a simplified packaging model aimed at midsize organisations.

The changes come alongside separate launches tied to what Cohesity calls "enterprise AI resilience", including a data security posture management (DSPM) product and new functions in its Gaia service, which focuses on search and insights from backed-up data.

"AI is increasing both the value of data and the risk surrounding it," said Vasu Murthy, Chief Product Officer at Cohesity. "Resilience today requires the ability to detect threats early, recover to a clean state, and maintain control across complex environments at the speed and scale modern enterprises demand. These updates build on the protection and security foundation organisations rely on as they operationalise AI. We're also expanding how customers access, deploy, and use our platform. As AI becomes foundational to business, Cohesity delivers a unified platform that protects and secures data while accelerating innovation."

Sovereign cloud

Sovereign cloud is increasingly a requirement for organisations facing data residency rules, jurisdictional restrictions, and sector regulation. In this context, cloud architectures often go beyond storage to include backup, recovery, and security controls that operate within a country or defined legal boundary.

Cohesity has added AntemetA and Singtel to its sovereign cloud ecosystem. It also highlighted earlier steps, including acting as a launch partner for the AWS European Sovereign Cloud and gaining certification as a Google Cloud Ready Regulated and Sovereignty Solutions partner.

In Canada, Cohesity is working with Micrologic on sovereign cloud data protection. It positioned these arrangements as part of a broader approach that lets customers align backup and recovery controls with local rules and operational constraints.

Threat detection

The updates include new scanning and recovery options for self-managed and disconnected environments. These include so-called dark sites, where systems do not connect to the public internet, and vaulted backups that organisations keep isolated from production networks.

One addition is integrated threat scanning for self-managed Cohesity FortKnox environments, aimed at customers with digital sovereignty requirements and those running isolated deployments. The scanning checks vaulted data for malware and verifies recovery points before restoration.

Cohesity is also planning integrated threat scanning for dark site deployments of Cohesity Data Cloud, including malware scanning and indicators-of-compromise checks in fully disconnected environments.

For customers using the NetBackup Flex Appliance, Cohesity is adding self-encrypting drives and integrated malware scanning. The aim is to protect data at rest and bring scanning into the appliance layer. Cohesity linked the change to compliance and physical security scenarios, including the risk of device removal.

Another enhancement is recovery of cloud application environments using declarative design. In this approach, infrastructure-as-code configurations provide a baseline for rebuilding environments. Cohesity said this reduces configuration drift and lowers the risk of restoring vulnerabilities alongside applications and data.

Cohesity also pointed to security functions tied to its work with Google, including a managed service option for FortKnox on Google Cloud and integrations with Google Threat Intelligence and Google Private Scanning within Cohesity Data Cloud. Cohesity said this extends cyber vaulting to Google Cloud and adds sandbox inspection to backup and recovery workflows.

DSPM launch

Cohesity has introduced a data security posture management product, Cohesity DSPM, powered by Cyera. The service focuses on continuous discovery and classification of sensitive data, along with posture analysis across cloud services, SaaS applications, and AI-related environments.

Cohesity said the service supports prioritised remediation workflows and is designed to reduce exposure before incidents occur, aligning with its broader focus on stronger controls around the data used by AI tools and agents.

Gaia updates

On the insights side, Cohesity is extending Gaia, which it describes as a way for organisations to generate insights from data already protected in Cohesity Data Cloud. The latest additions include federated semantic search via the Model Context Protocol, which Cohesity said allows AI-powered enterprise applications such as Glean to access governed backup data.

Cohesity has also unveiled the Cohesity Gaia Catalog, which it said will allow teams to discover and access protected data from analytics platforms including Databricks and Microsoft Fabric.

Midsize packaging

Cohesity Essentials is a simplified pricing and packaging option for midsize organisations. Cohesity said it reduces complexity and overhead compared with broader product bundles, while still providing access to its cyber resilience platform and its protection, security, and AI-related functions.

James Eagleton, Managing Director for ANZ at Cohesity, said: "As enterprises accelerate AI and cloud adoption in an increasingly sophisticated threat landscape, it is critical to ensure sensitive data are properly managed and secured across cloud, SaaS and hybrid environments. With these latest innovations, Cohesity is helping customers across Australia and New Zealand to strengthen data security, detect threats faster, and protect critical AI and enterprise workloads. By bringing data protection, security, and AI-driven insights together on a unified platform, we enable organisations to innovate with confidence while maintaining a strong cyber resilience posture."