Veeam Buys Securiti AI for $1.725B to Unify Data Protection

Veeam plans to purchase a data security posture management stalwart led by a former Symantec executive to enable safe, responsible and controlled artificial intelligence adoption.

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The Seattle-based data resilience titan said its proposed $1.725 billion acquisition of San Jose, California-based Securiti AI will make it easier for organizations to manage production and backup data with equal insight and governance, said Senior Director of Product Strategy Rick Vanover. He said the deal will provide end-to-end visibility and control over data from where it runs to where it is backed up.

“There’s an incredible opportunity in this world where we’re fending off bad things happening to good data,” Vanover told Information Security Media Group. “The opportunity here of unifying the entire data estate is one of the many factors that piqued the interest for this intent to acquire.”

Securiti AI, founded in 2019, won the RSAC Innovation Sandbox Contest in 2020, has roughly 1,000 employees and has raised $156 million, including a $75 million Series C in October 2022 led by Owl Rock Capital. The company has been led since its inception by Rehan Jalil, who ran Elastica for nearly four years before selling the cloud access security broker to Blue Coat Systems for $280 million in November 2016 (see: Why Veeam Is Eyeing a $1.8B Buy of AI Security Firm Securiti).

Applying Security Across Both Backup, Production Systems

Veeam’s core business has focused on securing backup data from threats like ransomware, outages or data corruption, but as organizations undergo digital and AI transformations, Vanover said the data landscape has become significantly more complex and dispersed. The opportunity to unify both where data actively runs and where it’s passively stored is a driving reason behind the Veeam-Securiti AI deal.

“We’re looking for ways to solve the challenges in the market that a lot of organizations either already are facing or soon will face around enabling their own AI transformation to be safe, responsible and controlled,” Vanover said. “I think there’s just a lot of opportunity for trust in data today with the rapid change.”

The ability to apply analytics, security and compliance uniformly across both backup and production systems could transform how organizations manage risk, respond to threats and ensure data integrity, Vanover said. The combination of Veeam and Securiti AI will offer AI-driven visibility, security posture and privacy enforcement across the entire data lifecycle from active use to backup and archival, he said.

“Nothing’s gone across these two – primary and secondary estates,” Vanover said. “And if anything has, it would be from a storage manufacturer and it’s not super agnostic. That crossing of that line is the exciting thing.”

By embedding AI at the core of both primary and secondary data management, Veeam aims to deliver a platform that can automatically identify, secure and manage data regardless of where it lives or how it’s stored. The Securiti AI deal will give Veeam the tools to support organizations relying on AI not just for analytics, but also for core infrastructure decisions including security configuration and compliance, he said.

“The only practical way that customers are going to know what they have nowadays is to have it AI powered, period,” Vanover said. “Customers don’t know what they have. There’s no way. And we see that in Veeam. Before today, customers didn’t know if something was in production, and they didn’t back it up.”

How to Achieve a Continuous, Unified View of Data Security

Securiti AI brings visibility and intelligence to production environments, Vanover said, monitoring where sensitive data resides, who’s accessing it and whether it meets evolving compliance frameworks such as GDPR or CCPA. In Vanover’s view, Veeam is uniquely positioned to bridge that compliance gap between production and backup data by integrating Securiti AI’s privacy engine into Veeam’s backup platform.

“Safe use of data for AI is really the opportunity that Securiti AI has with their unique capabilities,” Vanover said. “When you think about the data resilience conversation, all kinds of amazing things start looking really attractive: data security posture management, the privacy, the governance and AI trust across the estate. Those things really make it incredibly attractive to us.”

With Securiti AI monitoring the live state of enterprise data and Veeam securing the data once it’s backed up or archived, Vanover said the company has the potential to offer a continuous and unified view of data security. Engaging with data from different parts of the lifecycle could help customers manage risks more proactively and streamline incident response, compliance and recovery workflows.

“If you look strictly at what’s on the truck on both companies today, they’re looking at data and providing their capabilities,” Vanover said. “Veeam’s backing that data up. It’s almost like there’s two different touchpoints of data that run an organization’s business. That same common thread is that data, and that is why it’s so important to span from primary to secondary with these types of insights.”

Veeam’s shift from a backup software vendor to a security-driven data resilience company started with the Coveware acquisition in April 2024, which Vanover said added ransomware incident response and threat intelligence capabilities. Securiti AI is expected to become another pillar in this transformation, giving Veeam stronger footing in adjacent markets including DSPM, compliance and AI governance, he said.

“There’s clear examples of an acquisition helping that security story,” Vanover said. “There’s our own IP and innovation helping that security story. And then there’s a massive expanse of partnerships. I like to call it the power of three. Those three things together help solidify that security story, and this, pending the deal closing, will be another massive feather in that cap.”