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VeeamON 2026 updates target AI trust, resilience
As agentic AI is on the rise, the vendor focused its flagship event on the convergence of AI, trust and data security.
NEW YORK CITY -- Security and resilience were top of mind at VeeamON 2026, Veeam's flagship conference, where the vendor announced several updates aimed at leading customers through the latest age of AI development.
AI security and trust were central to the releases, addressing customer concerns surrounding the rise of agentic AI, which enables agents to act independently and assist with business processes.
To act as intended, agents must be provided with accurate data and contextual knowledge to make the right decisions. Unfortunately, many organizations are in the dark about what agents know and have access to, according to Rick Vanover, Veeam's vice president of product strategy. And that lack of clarity has consequences.
"Agent-powered mistakes are happening. And what's scary is that some we know about, and some we don't," said Vanover.
While agentic AI mistakes might not be considered as destructive as large-scale natural disasters, the business impacts can be expensive and even reputation-ruining for an organization, he continued.
"It could be other problems, such as sensitive data moved to the wrong place, or confidential information being shared with people who shouldn't be getting it," Vanover said.
These concerns and the lack of trust in AI agents are major reasons AI initiatives are stalling.
"The ability to trust data is the real bottleneck," said Veeam CEO Anand Eswaran in his opening keynote.
Trust in the age of AI is a critical component of the vendor's plans moving forward. Previously known as a data resilience company, Veeam has pivoted to a focus on data and AI trust since its acquisition of data and AI security company Securiti AI in December of last year.
A new trust layer for AI
According to Eswaran, a critical layer is missing in AI tools: Trust.
Vendors like Qlik and Ataccama have released products that aim to increase trust in AI deployments, and Veeam is targeting this concern with the Veeam DataAI Command Platform. The platform runs on the DataAI Command Graph, a product of Securiti AI.
"With the DataAI Command Platform, Veeam is building the missing layer combining resilience, security, governance, compliance and privacy, in one platform," said Eswaran.
The DataAI Command Platform is a trust layer for AI that spans production and backup data and covers all agents, identities and models across an organization. The typically siloed domains of security, governance, compliance, privacy and resilience are united in a single fabric, providing the visibility agents require to act without missing critical context.
Breaking down the silos around security and data protection is critical since agentic AI risk is not just a concern for the organization's backup personnel, according to Jack Poller, founder and principal analyst for Paradigm Technica.
"They're starting to talk to a different set of people, instead of just thinking about the backup and recovery administrators," Poller said. "They're talking to the people that have an understanding of data throughout the company, how it's used, and what the implications are when it disappears."
According to Palo Alto Network's 2026 Predictions for Autonomous AI, AI agents currently outnumber human employees by 82:1, indicating the risk extends far beyond checking for exposure in backup and recovery. Agentic AI creates risk throughout the business.
The new platform has the following capabilities:
- DataAI Security provides a unified view of data and AI security posture management combined with identity intelligence and resilience.
- DataAI Governance enforces control at the data source rather than at the agent. When governance occurs at the source, known and unknown agents cannot access sensitive data.
- DataAI Compliance can generate auditable evidence for regulators and executive boards and is mapped against over 100 regulatory frameworks, including the EU AI Act, DORA, GDPR, HIPAA and NIST.
- DataAI Privacy enforces automated privacy policies in real time, at the source. It uses SecuritiAI's People Data Graph to unify structured and unstructured personal data across environments.
- DataAI Precision Resilience uses the DataAI Command Graph to perform granular, targeted recovery without having to perform a full restore.
Veeam's depiction of resilience as the underlying foundation to these elements was an interesting vision, according to Johnny Yu, an analyst with IDC. However, he's curious how receptive security teams will be.
"Traditionally, a whole lot of that is the purview of the security team, whereas the resilience is the data protection stuff we're used to from the days of yesteryear," Yu said.
However, he pointed out that, while Veeam buyers are primarily on the data protection side, this unification is bringing security teams into those discussions.
"Data security is being brought into those conversations because they have a seat at the table and they need to know how these products work or, at the very least, how the product will interact with their own stuff on the security side," Yu said.
Veeam Data Platform 13.1 coming soon
Veeam also announced a preview of Veeam Data Platform 13.1, with over 70 new updates on the way.
Veeam released v13 of the platform in November of last year, with cybersecurity and AI at the forefront. Version 13.1builds on the last iteration with capabilities that emphasize unifying previously siloed departments of security, compliance and governance.
Scheduled to be generally available in early Q3 2026, 13.1 includes the following, with more features being revealed closer to release:
- Portability across more hypervisors, including OpenShift.
- Cybersecurity enhancements and security ecosystem reinforcement.
- Expanded threat detection that will cover AWS, Azure, NAS and Microsoft 365,
- Built-in malware protection.
- Automated Active Directory (AD) forest recovery.
Vanover singled out the automated AD forest recovery as a particular standout. Using a wizard-driven approach, 13.1 turns a complex, multi-step process into a single action that takes minutes.
Poller was satisfied with the announced updates, but is looking forward to the vendor incorporating more AI and LLM capabilities down the road.
"What I saw was only the tip of the iceberg, where we still have to think about and use the system interface the way it is, and then we can layer AI on top of it instead, " he said.
Poller added that he’d like to see the ability to use natural language to make more complex requests and queries in future releases.
"I want to see Veeam make that leap because that's going to set them apart," he said
Additional updates target resilience
Veeam also previewed two resilience-focused offerings: Veeam Intelligence ResOps for Microsoft 365 and an updated Veeam Data and AI Trust Maturity Model.
Veeam Intelligence ResOps is an add-on for Microsoft 365 that will be generally available in Q3 of 2026. It uses the Data Command Graph to unify data context and recovery, enabling organizations to manage, back up and retain data more intelligently and to restore only affected data in a recovery. It is initially available for Microsoft 365, but the vendor plans to add more workloads in the future.
The Data and AI Trust Maturity Model aims to address the "AI readiness gap," according to Eswaran.
"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," he said.
The model, available free to Veeam customers, provides organization leaders with a view of where they stand now with AI development and what their next steps should be. It does this by evaluating AI maturity across 12 dimensions and maps progress across five stages, identifying where controls exist, where they break down, and what the organization must prioritize to strengthen trust, governance and resilience. This provides organizations with actionable plans and concrete evidence they can present to leadership about where the business stands.
Yu said he hoped to hear more about the maturity model, which was first presented at VeeamON last year. While Veeam has updated the maturity model, he noted that there could have been a clearer breakdown of the changes between the two models.
"I want to see a side-by-side comparison to see what they added to it and the justifications for what they added," said Yu.
Erin Sullivan is a senior site editor at Informa TechTarget covering data technologies.
