Endpoint & Network Security

Akamai Technologies is deepening its shift from content delivery into security and cloud infrastructure, anchored by an expanded Anthropic agreement worth $11.6 billion over seven years, with potential to grow by an additional $9 billion. Second-quarter 2026 security revenues rose 10% year over year to $604 million, more than half of total revenues, while Cloud Infrastructure Services revenues surged 39% to $99 million, and first-half 2026 CIS contracts totaled more than $2.8 billion. Total second-quarter revenues rose 5% to $1.1 billion, but non-GAAP earnings fell 8% to $1.59 per share, adjusted EBITDA dropped 6%, and non-GAAP operating margin contracted to 25% from 30%. Delivery and other cloud application revenues declined 6% to roughly $396 million, and Akamai expects approximately $5.5 billion of total capital expenditures tied to the Anthropic commitment, including around $1.7 billion of incremental capex in 2026. Management guided 2026 revenues to between $4.45 billion and $4.53 billion, while 2026 earnings estimates fell 4.6% to $6.62 and 2027 estimates dropped 8.6% to $6.79 over the past year.

In fiscal 2027, the government will strengthen public-private efforts to investigate whether attackers have infiltrated or are lurking within systems, in order to protect critical infrastructure such as power and telecommunications from cyberattacks. It will build detection methods tailored to threat intelligence and share them with private operators. "Threat hunting," which seeks out threats lurking inside systems, is one of the means of active cyber defense under the relevant law that took effect on the same day, and based on specific threat intelligence, the National Cyber Operations Office will reproduce attacks in a virtual environment and build and verify detection methods that the private sector can use. The Ministry of Defense will also leverage the search capabilities cultivated in the Self-Defense Forces' information systems to provide direct support, including visiting critical infrastructure operators upon request, and the National Cyber Operations Office and the Ministry of Defense have included related expenses in their budget requests for fiscal 2027. Behind this is the concern that a shutdown of privately operated critical infrastructure could lead to a national crisis in a contingency, and U.S. authorities estimated in 2024 that a group believed to be backed by the Chinese government, "Volt Typhoon," had maintained access to parts of U.S. critical infrastructure for more than five years. On the other hand, accumulating and analyzing the logs needed for hunting requires manpower and cost, and NTT Data has been conducting threat hunting on its internal systems since 2024, with Yusuke Nakajima, who is in charge of the effort, pointing out that "to expand the activity, we need to show management the cost-effectiveness."

HENNGE, a company engaged in the cloud security business, announced on the 2nd that its change of market segment to the Prime Market has been approved by the Tokyo Stock Exchange. The change from the current Growth Market will take effect on the settlement dates for the new share issuance and secondary offering, October 20 to 22, which are being conducted to meet listing criteria such as net asset requirements. The new share issuance will be 1.1 million shares, with a secondary offering of 1.38 million shares by founder and president Kazuhiro Ogura and others, and an additional secondary offering via over-allotment is also planned. The maximum amount to be raised is 2.363 billion yen, which is planned to be allocated to the main service, advertising and promotion, and hiring.

Tenable reported second-quarter revenue of $268.5 million, up 8.6% year on year and 1.4% above analysts' expectations, in what the company called a strong quarter. Co-CEO Steve Vintz credited continued momentum in Tenable One, and the results also included an impressive beat of analysts' adjusted operating income estimates and next-quarter EPS guidance exceeding expectations. Tenable's stock is up 12.2% since reporting and trades at $35.31. Across the 9 cybersecurity stocks tracked in the group, revenues beat consensus estimates by 1.7% and next-quarter revenue guidance came in 0.9% above expectations, with share prices up 15.8% on average since the latest earnings results. Among peers, Qualys posted the best quarter with revenue of $182.2 million, up 11% and 2% above expectations, while SentinelOne delivered the weakest performance against estimates despite revenue of $292 million, up 20.6%.

Quantum Secure Encryption Corp. has appointed Joseph Hall as Chief Intelligence Officer, adding more than 20 years of frontline cybersecurity and threat intelligence experience to the post-quantum cybersecurity company. Hall has held senior roles including Director of Threat Intel R&D at Infoblox, Head of Security Services at Nile, Principal Security Consultant at Fortinet and Chief Information Security Officer at HEROIC Cybersecurity, with earlier security engineering roles at Dell SonicWall, Sophos, Symantec PGP, American Express and Solera Networks. He will work closely with QSE Chief Technology Officer Michael Massing, whose background includes leading Dell SonicWall's Unified Threat Management business unit and helping scale enterprise cybersecurity product lines to approximately $400 million in annual sales. The company also announced the grant of 350,000 stock options to its employees, exercisable at $0.50 per share for five years from the date of grant and subject to certain vesting requirements, plus 350,000 restricted share units that are each exercisable into a common share and expire three years from the date of grant.

Cisco Systems said enterprises are giving AI agents more control over network operations, citing a survey of 1,000 technology leaders conducted by Omdia for Cisco in which the average organization reported roughly 4,100 monitoring events a day. Cisco estimated that clearing the daily network alert backlog by hand would take about 100 specialists, and 86% of respondents favored a single integrated platform, giving the company an opening to sell networking, security and observability together. Shares slipped about 0.4% to $106.265 at 11.25am ET on September 29. That opening still has to turn into sales, with investors needing to see platform bookings, more customers adopting Splunk alongside Cisco products, and faster incident resolution. The chart places Cisco's $106.265 share price 41.93% above its $74.87 GF Value estimate.

Radware Ltd. introduced Radware Agent Trust Management, a new solution designed to help organizations participate more securely in the emerging AI agent economy by facilitating how trusted AI agents interact with their applications. The solution captures an agent's declared intent through active conversation, continuously assesses whether its actions remain consistent with that intent, and controls what agents are permitted to do, moving businesses beyond broad allow-or-block decisions. According to Radware's H1 Global Threat Analysis Report, 77% of organizations are actively deploying or implementing AI agents, yet only 17.2% report full visibility into the AI agents operating within their environments. Radware Agent Trust Management is available now as part of Radware Cloud Application Protection services, extending Radware's bot management capabilities to address the distinct visibility, trust assessment and governance requirements of AI agents. David Aviv, chief technology officer at Radware, said organizations need to be able to embrace this shift while maintaining visibility and control over agent activity.

CyberRatings.org and NSS Labs released the results of their 2026 Cloud Network Firewall evaluation, in which only four of nine tested products earned a Recommended rating. Each of the four Recommended products achieved Security Effectiveness of 99.7% or higher: Fortinet FortiGate Next-Generation Firewall, HPE Juniper Networking vSRX Next Generation Firewall, Palo Alto Networks VM-Series Next-Generation Firewall, and Versa Networks Next Generation Firewall. Check Point CloudGuard Network Security Next-Gen Firewall earned a Neutral rating despite posting the highest Security Effectiveness at 99.95%, because of its above-average price per Mbps. AWS Network Firewall and Microsoft Azure Firewall both received 0% for Security Effectiveness and were rated Caution, while Google Cloud Platform NGFW Enterprise at 77.45% and Cisco Secure Firewall Threat Defense Virtual at 66.10% also placed in Caution. The tests were run under identical conditions using the NSS Labs Cloud Network Firewall Test Methodology v4.1, with evasions tested through 5,004 attacks spanning 43 techniques across OSI Layers 3, 4, and 7.

Hillstone Networks announced that it has set September 29, 2026 as the grant date, awarding 7 million restricted shares to 122 incentive recipients at a grant price of 13.40 yuan per share. In the first half of 2026, Hillstone Networks achieved revenue of 451 million yuan and a net loss attributable to the parent company of 21.12 million yuan.

Itron announced a technology collaboration with Crytica Security on September 22 to embed real-time threat detection directly into its smart meters and edge endpoints. The partnership addresses a critical vulnerability in utility field infrastructure, where resource-constrained smart meters cannot host traditional endpoint security software; Crytica's lightweight probe continuously scans devices to detect unauthorized instruction modifications within seconds without impacting device performance. The move reinforces Itron's strategic shift toward higher-margin, software-centric outcomes, following Q2 2026 results released on July 28 in which adjusted gross margin expanded 460 basis points year-over-year to 41.4%, ARR surged 21% to $417 million, and adjusted EBITDA grew 8% despite top-line headwinds, prompting management to raise full-year non-GAAP EPS guidance to a range of $6.30 to $6.50 per share. Total revenue nonetheless contracted 7% year-over-year in Q2 2026 to $563 million from $607 million, dragged by a 17% drop in Networked Solutions revenue, while total backlog edged down to $4.4 billion from $4.5 billion a year ago. The Crytica deal carries no immediate financial disclosure or revenue timeline.

Zscaler has promoted Ross Tackett to Chief Revenue Officer, succeeding Mike Rich. Mike Rich will remain with the company as a strategic advisor to support the leadership transition in Zscaler's global sales organization. Tackett brings decades of enterprise sales leadership experience from major technology companies to the CRO role. The change puts Tackett in charge of global sales and partnerships as Zscaler pushes for larger multi-year deals and deeper wallet share, including newer AI security and Agentic SOC offerings sold in competition with Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike. The company's investment story rests on whether its AI-first, zero-trust security platform and heavy go-to-market spending can translate into durable, efficient expansion, with the article pointing to a $197 fair value for Zscaler.

Federal authorities have closed criminal and civil probes into CrowdStrike Holdings over its distribution deals without pursuing legal action, removing a legal overhang that had weighed on sentiment. The company has been on a sharp upswing, with a 30-day share price return of 33.28% and a 90-day gain of 43.85% as the market digests both the cleared investigations and strong quarterly results. CrowdStrike last closed at $252.13, while the most followed narrative anchors fair value closer to $193.13, implying the stock is 31% overvalued. The company's strategic focus on Next-Gen SIEM, cloud-native security, and large-scale partnerships, along with its expansive data capabilities for AI development, positions it for robust demand growth. Still, the story could change quickly if newer products or acquisitions disappoint, or if rising competition pressures the rich P/E assumptions already reflected in the valuation.

Gen Digital made a preliminary approach to buy web-services provider GoDaddy in a transaction valued at $12 billion, a deal that sent GoDaddy's stock higher while Gen's own shares fell 12% to $23.07, the day's biggest large-cap decline. The $12 billion bid is too big for Gen's own $17 billion size, and the company is still carrying heavy debt from its 2022 purchase of Avast, meaning it would have to add borrowing, issue new shares, or both to fund the deal. GoDaddy serves more than 20 million small-business and individual customers and manages roughly 81 million web domains globally, an audience Gen could sell its security and identity products to, though the two companies' business models differ significantly. Bears see the move as a sign Gen's core business is slowing, with web hosting and domain registration carrying operational requirements distinct from endpoint protection software and creating integration risk. Institutional interest had already slipped before the approach was reported, with 44 hedge funds holding stakes in Gen in the second quarter of 2026, down from 48 in the first, and the deal remains at an early stage and could still change or collapse.

Palo Alto Networks closed its fiscal fourth quarter with roughly 2,500 platformizations, including a record 220 net additions, as the company bets its platformization strategy can carry growth toward a targeted $20 billion in Next-Generation Security ARR by fiscal 2030. NGS ARR jumped 63% to $9.1 billion in the quarter, a figure that also benefited from acquisitions including CyberArk and Chronosphere, while net retention among platformized customers exceeds 120% and more than 65% of NGS ARR now comes from those customers. The company says it is on track to deliver more than 4,000 platformizations, which it expects to drive the majority of that $20 billion FY2030 target. Palo Alto has been adding capabilities and making strategic purchases to bolster the strategy, launching Unit 42 Continuous Frontier AI Defense on September 22, an annual subscription service that uses multiple frontier AI models to identify, validate and remediate exposures, and acquiring Portkey for an AI gateway, Koi to expand Prisma AIRS into agentic endpoint security, and CyberArk for identity security across human, machine and agentic identities. Gartner estimates global information-security spending will rise about 12% this year to $244 billion, supporting the market backdrop, though the company must integrate several acquisitions while expanding into fast-evolving AI-security markets. Hedge fund holdings in Palo Alto rose to 89 in the second quarter from 87, with Ken Fisher's Fisher Asset Management increasing its stake 2,143%, and short interest stands at 2.66% of the float, down from 2.8%.

CrowdStrike Holdings shares have climbed about 13.9% in the month since its last earnings report, outperforming the S&P 500. The company reported non-GAAP earnings of 31 cents per share for the second quarter of fiscal 2027, beating the Zacks Consensus Estimate by 6.9% and rising 34.8% year over year, while revenues of $1.47 billion beat the consensus estimate by 2.2% and grew 25.8% year over year. Ending annual recurring revenue reached $5.84 billion, up more than 25% year over year, with record net new ARR of $333 million, up 51%, and ending ARR from Falcon Flex surpassing $2.29 billion, up 101%. CrowdStrike raised its fiscal 2027 revenue outlook to between $5.991 billion and $6.011 billion, with ARR of $6.603 billion to $6.612 billion and non-GAAP earnings per share of $1.25 to $1.26, lifting its full-year net new ARR growth outlook by 630 basis points to 34% at the midpoint. Despite the results, the consensus estimate has shifted down 93.51% over the past month, and the stock carries a Zacks Rank #4 (Sell).

CrowdStrike Holdings has joined peers as a founding member of the new Blueprint Alliance to secure AI agents. The Blueprint Alliance brings together AWS, Google Cloud, Okta, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Zscaler and others in a shared security effort, with members planning to create common principles and a reference architecture that enterprises can use to manage and protect AI agents. CrowdStrike sells cloud-based cybersecurity tools that protect endpoints and data for large organizations, so its role in the Blueprint Alliance links frontline threat intelligence with emerging AI agent guardrails and gives the vendor a direct seat in conversations about how machine-led systems are governed and monitored inside enterprises. The company's ongoing success with cloud and partner ecosystems, including surpassing $1 billion in AWS Marketplace sales, indicates strong growth potential in cloud-derived revenues and faster deal cycles. The move also brushes against a key risk: if Blueprint standards favor open, multi-vendor approaches, CrowdStrike must prove its AI offerings, such as Charlotte and AIDR, actually become the operational brain rather than just another feed into shared governance stacks.

ARIA Cybersecurity, a CSPi business, announced its second deployment within a leading pharmaceutical producer's production infrastructure, protecting animal drug production from attacks and locking down critical systems from production disruptions. The drug producer needed to keep critical applications running and protected, since disruption to production reduces revenue and can force in-process pharmaceuticals to be discarded, while critical infrastructure services had to stay locked down from disruptive application updates and fully available during production shifts to optimize operating margins. ARIA said AZT PROTECT was the only solution that solved these challenges with an affordable, simple-to-deploy, fully automated protection solution, locking down production applications from unintended updates and blocking nonapproved applications from running on production devices. The Director of Production Operations said the company spent a fair amount of time making its selection and that AZT more than met expectations due to how easy it was to deploy and operate, providing superior cybersecurity protection compared to other leading endpoint vendors evaluated. Gary Southwell, President of ARIA Cybersecurity, said the company was pleased to safeguard the client's infrastructure, which provides drugs for pets, and believes the work done so far will help the customer achieve and sustain improved production margins while lowering its risk against attacks.

GoDaddy shares jumped 14% after a report that Gen Digital, the maker of Norton 360 antivirus software, made a takeover offer for the company, while Gen Digital dropped 7.6%. According to a Financial Times report on Thursday citing people familiar with the matter, discussions are at an early stage and there is no guarantee a deal will happen, with the offer made in recent weeks. The exact terms of the offer could not immediately be learned. GoDaddy has a market cap of $12.2 billion, while Gen Digital is valued at $15.7 billion. Both Gen Digital and GoDaddy declined to comment to the FT, and shares of GoDaddy competitor Wix surged 6.5%.

Fastly, Inc. expanded its Fastly for AI portfolio with AI Runtime Control, AI Firewall, and new API Security tools, giving organizations real-time visibility and control over AI traffic across models, applications, and enterprise APIs on its global edge platform. By unifying AI governance, security, and routing at the edge, Fastly aims to let customers run increasingly complex AI and agent workloads without locking into a single model provider. The company's investment narrative projects $947.9 million in revenue and $76.8 million in earnings by 2029, with a fair value of $27.00, a 9% downside to its current price. Some of the most optimistic analysts were already modeling revenue near US$981,000,000 by 2029. The Comcast partnership remains relevant because it shows how Fastly's edge software can be embedded deeper into a major operator's network for latency-sensitive workloads, including AI inference.

Zscaler launched its Agentic SOC, an AI-first security operations platform that combines proprietary telemetry, a large decoy mesh network, and integrated zero trust controls with third-party tools to detect and contain threats at machine speed. The platform uses AI agents co-developed with Anthropic and OpenAI, trained on a decade of frontline SOC experience and powered by more than 750 billion daily zero trust transactions to automate complex threat investigation and response. The launch follows the June expansion of Zscaler's Zero Trust SASE with the ZAgent Framework and new browser, endpoint, and cloud controls, both moves deepening Zscaler's role as an integrated security and AI operations platform. Zscaler's narrative projects $5.1 billion revenue and $132.0 million earnings by 2029, yielding a $196.95 fair value, a 6% downside to its current price, while some of the lowest estimate analysts assume revenue of about US$5.2 billion and earnings near US$50 million by 2029 and worry that acquisitions and aggressive AI investment around Agentic SOC could keep margins subdued even if topline keeps growing.