# Veeam says agentic AI is the number one cyber threat > Source: > Published: 2026-05-14 13:51:46+00:00 data protection # Veeam says agentic AI is the number one cyber threat AI Agents are spreading like wildfire and becoming the leading cyber-threat. [Veeam](https://www.blocksandfiles.com/security/2026/03/20/veeams-securiti-play-could-push-it-past-cohesity/5210230) says that, as enterprises adopt agentic AI, existing and often siloed data resilience and security tools are leaving gaps in visibility, governance, and recoverability. It wants to bring every workload, and every location together under one umbrella to fill the gaps and do so at scale. Veeam has announced a mass of stuff. There is an updated main protection offering, the Veeam Data Platform v13.1 (VDP), a Veeam DataAI Command Platform, with a DataAI Resilience Module, Intelligent ResOps, and a Data and AI Trust Maturity Model. Rehan Jalil, President, Products and Technology at Veeam, and the ex-President and CEO of Veeam-acquired Securiti said: “In a world defined by relentless ransomware, rapid infrastructure transformation, and accelerating AI innovation, ensuring your data is resilient has never been more challenging.“Fragmented data tools from security to governance and operations reduce visibility, add overhead, and leave unseen gaps. With Veeam Data Platform v13.1 and our DataAI Resilience Module in the DataAI Command Platform, we’re making resilience operations more powerful and intelligent so organizations can recover clean and fast and keep trusted data ready for the AI-powered future.” VDP 13.1 has 70-plus added features. It protects more hypervisors, has stronger identity recovery, enhanced security protections, and additional capabilities to be shared closer to general availability. It features: - Portability across unlimited hypervisors. - Identity resilience: Active Directory Forest Recovery. - Cybersecurity enhancements and security ecosystem reinforcement; post-quantum cryptography. - Smarter resilience economics: NAS archive, lower-cost long-term retention, reduced storage rates. - Expanded threat detection: Scanning will cover AWS, Azure, NAS, and M365, along with faster AD forest recovery and support for Hybrid FIPS and post-quantum encryption. ### DataAI Command Platform Veeam’s DataAI Command Platform brings together data, access, identities, and AI in one connected trust platform, which, it says, is built for a world where autonomous AI agents operate inside the enterprise at machine speed.The software is the result of Veeam’s acquisition of [Securiti AI](https://www.blocksandfiles.com/ai-ml/2025/10/21/veeam-snaps-up-securiti-in-17b-deal-to-bolster-cyber-resilience-portfolio/1604578) for $1.7 billion last year. Anand Eswaran, Veeam CEO, said; “The infrastructure to deploy AI exists. The infrastructure to trust it doesn’t. With the DataAI Command Platform, Veeam is building the missing layer combining resilience, security, governance, compliance and privacy, in one platform. Today, agents need to get to data, which means we need to open the security perimeter. That means the security control point is now the data itself and that demands a new approach to trust that can accelerate the safe use of AI.” Veeam alarmingly declares that autonomous AI agents now outnumber human employees 82:1, and 97 percent of those agents carry excessive privileges. The volume and speed at which agents operate is collapsing the window available to detect and respond to threats. Agentic AI is now the number one cyber threat. Where do these dramatic numbers come from? We understand that CyberArk’s April 2025 Identity Security Landscape [report](https://www.cyberark.com/threat-landscape/?utm_source=google&utm_medium=paid_search&utm_term=brand_identity_security_emea_uk_ie_en&utm_content=lp_identity_security_threat_landscape_2025&utm_campaign=identity_security&cq_plac=&cq_net=g&cq_plt=gp&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIrofa47e4lAMVzY1QBh3zrhwGEAAYASAAEgJ6wfD_BwE&gad_source=1&gad_campaignid=21688738219&gbraid=0AAAAAD_gt5Fq4VLKuBwJxpvcM_A6n40ma) found that machine/non-human identities (service accounts, API keys, bots, automation, and AI agents) now outnumber human employees by 82:1 globally. CyberArk is measuring machine identities, not just autonomous AI Agents, far from it. If this is Veeam's source for the 82:1 ratio then it's seemingly exaggerating the autonomous AI Agent threat. The 97 percent excessive privileges number appears to come from an [Entro Security report](https://nhimg.org/2025-state-of-non-human-identities-and-secrets-in-cybersecurity) on the State of Non-Human Identities (NHIs) , which found that ~97 percent of NHIs (service accounts, bots, API keys, and now AI agents) operate with excessive privileges. The Veeam DataAI Command Platform is where data, access, identities, and AI converge in a single connected trust layer for AI. It spans production data and backup data, covering every agent, identity, and model across an organization’s entire IT estate. The platform is built on six integrated capabilities: - DataAI Command Graph — The intelligence foundation powering the entire platform. With 300+ connectors across every cloud, Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) application, and on-premises environment, the graph provides a granular understanding of the data, not which database exists, but which specific file carries sensitive data, who has access, and which exact change created a risk condition. The graph now spans both live and backup systems simultaneously — context that no point solution in the market has today. - DataAI Security — Powered by a DSPM platform providing data and AI security posture management combined with identity intelligence and resilience confidence in a single unified view. - DataAI Governance — Control enforced at the data source, not at the agent. Known and unknown agents — whether sanctioned or rogue — cannot access sensitive data if that data is governed at the source. This closes the structural gap in runtime-only agent governance approaches. - DataAI Compliance — Mapped against 100+ regulatory frameworks, including EU AI Act, DORA, GDPR, HIPAA, NIST, and AI RMF. It generates auditable evidence regulators and boards need. - DataAI Privacy — Automated privacy policies enforced in real time, at the source by user and jurisdiction. Powered by the most advanced identity intelligence graph in the industry (a People Data Graph) that unifies structured and unstructured personal data across hybrid multicloud environments, enabling faster and more accurate privacy operations than traditional siloed data mapping tools. - DataAI Precision Resilience — As the DataAI Command Graph understands the data estate at granular depth, recovery is surgical: undo exactly what went wrong without rewinding the entire system. Veeam announced a preview of the first two resilience offerings on the platform; Veeam Intelligence ResOps for M365, and a DataAI Resilience Module ### Veeam Intelligence ResOps This is the first resilience offering on the DataAI Command Platform and, Veeam says, helps organizations back up and retain data more intelligently, prioritize incident response with context on what changed (including AI-driven changes), and restore only the impacted data – reducing risk, disruption, and recovery time. [Microsoft 365](https://www.office.com) is the first supported workload. The core of Intelligence ResOps is the DataAI Command Graph, a unified intelligence layer which continuously maps data, users, permissions, AI agents, activity, and protection status to deliver actionable context across environments. Intelligence ResOps is sold as an extension of the Veeam resilience solutions on the Veeam DataAI Command Platform, and extends existing Veeam capabilities so that backup, recovery, and data decisions are based on a known context. Admin teams can connect data context (what it is, who/what can act on it, and what changed) with protection state (what’s covered and recoverable). The result is faster, more informed decisions across preparedness, incident response, and recovery. Ie; - Contextual Intelligence: Identify what data is sensitive, regulated, business-critical, or redundant/obsolete/trivial (ROT) to guide resilience decisions with real data context. - Backup and Recovery: Use connected intelligence to accelerate incident response and enable surgical recovery – restoring only what’s needed instead of broad, disruptive restores. - Data Lifecycle Intelligence: Surface ROT hotspots, retention-risk exposure, and misaligned policies that increase risk and inflate backup footprints. - AI Trust and Resilience: Gain visibility into AI agent activity and support investigation and rollback of unwanted agent-driven changes with Agent Commander. - Intelligence Agent: Ask Veeam as a built-in intelligence agent and receive natural-language insights about your data and AI to speed investigation, reporting, and day-to-day operational decisions. For Microsoft’s 365, Intelligent ResOps delivers shared context across production and backup for SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, and Exchange. It’s available as an add-on for Veeam Data Cloud for Microsoft 365, and enables admins to: - Get full context: Find sensitive, regulated, and ROT data across production and backup. - Track every action: Understand user and CoPilot activity, including what AI agents can access, share, and expose. - Recover in minutes: Restore only what’s needed, avoiding broad, slow restores. ### DataAI Resilience Module This, Veeam says, is the first step towards a single experience across all of Veeam’s offerings. This will eventually allow Veeam customers to unlock intelligence and agentic capabilities on Veeam’s DataAI Command Platform, powered by their DataAI Command Graph to help operators accelerate their operations. The DataAI Resilience Module features; - Single pane of glass: Centralized visibility into data resilience, posture, operational health, and readiness. - Global Search and Inventory – protect or recover anything, instantly: Quickly answer “is workload X protected?” and take action – from single-file recovery to full-site recovery or a clean room. - Reduced operational friction: Simplified workflows for Day 2 operations (on-going management and monitoring). - Lower misconfiguration risk: More consistent ongoing configuration. - AI Agents Built In: Use natural language commands for real-time log troubleshooting, automated ticket management, and predictive capacity planning. ### Data and AI Trust Maturity Model This is a framework designed to help organizations assess, benchmark, and strengthen how effectively they govern and operationalize AI as it shifts from assistive tools to autonomous agents acting on enterprise data at machine speed. Veeam says research conducted by Emerald Research Group on its behalf shows organizations have moved faster on AI agent adoption than on the identity frameworks, data foundations, and governance needed to mange hem effectively. Eswaren said: “Our research shows that while most organizations believe they are ready to scale AI safely and responsibly, many struggle to demonstrate that readiness in a board, audit, or regulatory context. The Data and AI Trust Maturity Model provides leaders with a clear, objective way to understand where they truly stand, identify execution gaps, and prioritize the capabilities required to operationalize AI trust, not just aspire to it. This is critical in an agentic world.” The model is applied through the Data and AI Trust Maturity Assessment, a consultative engagement delivered by Veeam’s data, security, and AI specialists and strategy leaders. So Veeam's people are assessing your readiness for operationalizing AI agents and suggesting products and services you might need. You might possibly be concerned about their objectivity. Veeam's assessment organizes AI agent trust readiness into four core areas: - Understood – Visibility and context across data and AI assets, lineage, and risk. - Secured – Identity and access governance, privacy, and dataprotection controls. - Resilient – Backup, recovery confidence, and operational continuity for critical data and AI‑dependent services. - Unleashed – Trusted data readiness to support responsible AI development and adoption. The outcome is: - A scored maturity profile across the model’s 12 dimensions. - Peer benchmark comparison to establish fact-based urgency and context, - Prioritized recommendations and a pragmatic roadmap to strengthen trust over time. - Executive-ready insights to support board oversight, audit conversations, and measurable progress tracking. ### Availability Veeam Data Platform v13.1 and the DataAI Resilience Module will be generally available in early Q3 2026 through Veeam’s global network of authorized partners, resellers, and distributors. Veeam Intelligent ResOps general availability is planned for Q3 2026, with Microsoft 365 as the first supported workload.