Somewhere in the corridors of #RSAC2026, there exists a creature called the “AI-native, #ZeroTrust enabled, agentic, self-healing, autonomous security operations platform with continuous compliance posture management”. It lives in press releases. It feeds on hype-cycle metrics. It reproduces by budding on LinkedIn every first Monday of the quarter.
Its declared features: it has AI inside, but nobody knows where. It is agentic, but when you ask what it decides, it decides not to answer. It is self-healing, but if you switch it off and on again it heals all the same, like every piece of IT kit since 1987. It is autonomous, yet 74% of buyers keep it on a lead (Darktrace 2026), and 14% let it off the lead, but only if they can chase after it.
Splunk presented its #AgenticSOC at RSA. Five vendors presented five competing frameworks for “agent identity”. VentureBeat counted, across all five of them, three critical flaws left wide open. It’s like unveiling five shoe models and discovering that none of the five has a sole, and every one of them is a stiletto.
The problem, mind you, is not AI. AI is legitimate technology, occasionally useful, exactly like the washing machine. The problem is that nobody calls their washing machine an “#AIpowered, water-trust enabled, agentic, self-cleaning, autonomous textile management platform with continuous fabric posture optimisation”, apart from cyber vendors, who would happily do it to a washing machine too, if you let them get their hands on one.
There is a paradox the industry is not flagging up. When you say “agentic” to a CISO, they reply with a blank smile, lost in the desert of decisions never taken. When you say it to a CFO, they reply with a cheque. When you say it to the platform itself, it stays silent. Not out of politeness. Because it has no idea it is one.
Happy AI-Weekend to the buyers, and may your next vendor explain the product to you in a sentence containing at least one verb. That alone would be a revolution!
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