Commvault executives warn AI is raising cyber resilience stakes

At Commvault’s SHIFT 2026 conference in Nashville, executives argued that operational resilience must move from a last-resort response to a continuous discipline, as AI-driven threats and increasingly autonomous processes raise the blast radius of disruptions. Sanjay Mirchandani, Commvault’s president and CEO, said in a keynote that “AI is changing the durable advantage you have built for your business, your brand, your supply chain, your data,” and that resilience will become a new competitive edge in the AI era.

Conference speakers noted that attackers are using automation to speed up reconnaissance, exploit development, social engineering and lateral movement, shrinking the window organisations have to detect and contain intrusions. Rajeev Kottomtharayil, Commvault’s chief products officer, added that recovery is increasingly about returning to a clean data state, asking how organisations can trust their recoveries when “everything is under attack.”

The event highlighted a shift towards continuous technologies as a baseline requirement. Pragnesh Dave, head of generative AI and ML sales at AWS, described resilience as enabling organisations to experiment with AI while controlling risk, urging leaders to consider the “blast radius” and time to recover from decisions going wrong. Peter Diamandis predicted widespread use of AI to migrate workloads to the digital edge, with recovery speed as a differentiator alongside innovation speed.

Bill O’Connell, Commvault’s CSO, cautioned that strong prevention remains essential, but the ability to recover quickly to a trusted state must be tested thoroughly beforehand. O’Connell also urged organisations to assess third-party supplier configurations and breach impacts with counterparties to understand how dependencies could affect rapid restoration.