1. Identity and Zero Trust: The Next Frontier in Enterprise Security

In our view, AI is accelerating the shift to identity-driven security, making Zero Trust the next frontier in enterprise defense. Zero Trust is a mindset that moves away from the assumption that anything inside a network can be trusted, replacing it with least-privilege access and continuous verification of every user, device and application before granting or maintaining access to data and systems.

We are seeing that proliferation of non-human identities—APIs, service accounts, IoT devices and now AI agents—has only compounded the complexity of identity management, reinforcing the need for Zero Trust principles to extend beyond human users. At the same time, as enterprises increasingly feed sensitive information into AI models and applications, data security becomes inseparable from identity, determining who can access what data, when, and under what conditions.

By enabling real-time verification and adaptive access controls, AI is transforming identity from a static safeguard into the operational backbone of modern cybersecurity. We believe this is helping to drive demand across areas such as Privileged Access Management (PAM), Identity Governance and Administration (IGA), Identity Security Posture Management (ISPM) and Identity Detection and Response. We also see a select group of larger growth-stage companies moving to consolidate this stack and meet an acute market need that we believe AI is helping to accelerate. Summit-backed Keeper Security is focused on addressing an important aspect of identity and Zero Trust with its password and access management platform, and our work with the company reinforces our conviction in the broader identity landscape.

As identity-related incidents remain one of the most common sources of breaches,⁽¹⁾ ransomware and data exfiltration, we expect demand for AI-powered identity and Zero Trust solutions to accelerate. We view these capabilities as becoming foundational to modern enterprise security, helping organizations strengthen protection for both human and non-human identities at scale.

2. AI-Powered Threat Detection and Response: Redefining Speed and Scale

With an expanding attack surface that now spans endpoints, cloud workloads, networks, identities and SaaS applications, traditional rules-based approaches can no longer keep pace. AI makes it possible to spot subtle anomalies and respond in real time, laying the groundwork for more predictive and autonomous approaches to defense and, in our view, making threat detection and response one of the clearest beneficiaries of AI adoption.

Summit recognized the potential of AI in threat detection and response over a decade ago, investing in Darktrace in 2015. As one of the first AI-native cybersecurity companies, we believe Darktrace pioneered the use of unsupervised learning to analyze network traffic, detect anomalies and identify threats without relying on static rules. Darktrace’s approach helped redefine threat detection and response and fueled the company to a $5.3 billion enterprise value at the time of its 2024 acquisition.

Today, we are increasingly seeing companies apply AI across the spectrum of threat detection and response, both by enhancing existing tools and by building new AI-native solutions. As adversaries grow faster and more sophisticated, we believe the ability to continuously learn from data and respond dynamically will remain central to effective cybersecurity.

3. AI-Driven Automation: Powering Security & IT Operations at Scale

The same AI-driven automation we see transforming threat detection and response is also reshaping both security and IT operations workflows, turning routine execution into a strategic layer of defense. Enterprises are increasingly adopting AI-driven tools to handle repetitive, high-volume, resource-intensive tasks, particularly within these areas.

In security operations centers (SOCs), high alert volumes and repetitive investigations have long led to analyst fatigue. AI can help address this challenge by accelerating threat detection, automating analysis and context gathering and filtering out false positives. We believe Red Canary provides a compelling example of this transformation. Applying insights from more than a decade of proprietary threat and remediation data, Red Canary’s AI agents help cut investigation times by 90% on average⁽²⁾ and free human analysts to focus on the most complex risks. We believe this impact on SOC efficiency and resilience helped lead to the company’s acquisition by Zscaler earlier this year, underscoring how integral these capabilities have become to next-generation security platforms.

In IT operations, we are seeing AI-powered automation transforming routine tasks into proactive layers of defense. Patch management, system monitoring and updates may seem mundane, but failure to execute them effectively can open the door to major vulnerabilities. Summit portfolio company NinjaOne has evolved its platform to embed AI in these workflows, most notably with its Patch Intelligence AI, which is designed to flag risky updates before wide deployment. By working to make patching predictive and intelligent, NinjaOne helps improve efficiency and reduce security risk, closing gaps before they can be exploited.

We have seen how AI-driven automation is already delivering measurable results, improving efficiency, reducing burnout and strengthening resilience, making it one of the most immediate and impactful innovations in cybersecurity today. We believe this theme will remain central to SOC and IT operations in the years ahead.

4. AI in Application Security: Keeping Pace with Modern Development

Applications and APIs underpin the digital operations of modern enterprises, but we believe they also represent one of the fastest-growing sources of risk. The rise of AI is amplifying this challenge, accelerating both the pace of software development and the speed at which attackers can discover and exploit weaknesses. We are seeing that traditional models of application security cannot keep pace with the scale and dynamism of modern environments. With new code released daily, hundreds of applications running in parallel, and shifting cloud architectures, we believe vulnerabilities can be exploited long before traditional cybersecurity methods detect them.

AI is helping to change this paradigm. By continuously analyzing application behavior, prioritizing vulnerabilities by potential impact and adapting protections as environments evolve, AI-driven platforms are moving application security from periodic manual testing to more continuous protection. This enables security to be embedded earlier in development while also extending into production, which we believe creates a more resilient layer of defense. Summit portfolio company Invicti illustrates this opportunity, applying AI to accelerate detection, improve accuracy and help DevOps and security teams protect applications without slowing innovation.