Context and Veeam underline the challenges and importance of securing artificial intelligence, while Arrow takes steps to increase partner skills around the technology
The channel continues to react to the emerging opportunities around balancing the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and the increased risk it brings.
Recent days have brought increased research and activity from those eager to showcase customer responses to the technology and drive faster adoption through enhanced partner support.
Research from Context indicates strong demand across Europe for applying equivalent security measures to AI agents as those established for human employees.
“The development marks a meaningful shift in how businesses are approaching cyber security as the boundaries of what needs to be protected expand beyond people and devices to include autonomous AI agents making independent decisions across corporate infrastructure,” said Joe Turner, vice-president of research at Context.
The market watcher noted increased demand for identity-centric models during the first quarter of 2026 as customers looked to reduce the risk posed by AI agents.
At the same time, there is a general shift by customers towards adopting zero-trust architecture as they seek to limit the risk of breaches.
An AI agent with access to financial systems or customer data is a security risk in the same way a privileged human user is. The tools to manage that are still maturing, but the investment is starting now, ahead of the regulatory deadlines that will make it non-negotiable
Joe Turner, Context
“The nature of what organisations need to secure is changing faster than most security strategies have kept pace with,” said Turner. “An AI agent with access to financial systems or customer data is a security risk in the same way a privileged human user is. The tools to manage that are still maturing, but the investment is starting now, ahead of the regulatory deadlines that will make it non-negotiable.”
Build trust in AI
The importance of being able to enhance customer trust around AI was a key tenet of research shared by Veeam Software, which found that 88% of customers are already using agents despite the lower number that feel AI-ready.
The sense of a gap between usage and readiness was underlined, with almost three-quarters of respondents admitting they lacked visibility of AI systems operating outside their approved processes.
“Most organisations don’t have an AI adoption problem; they have an AI trust problem,” said Anand Eswaran, CEO of Veeam. “The first phase of AI was defined by infrastructure investment, experimentation and acceleration. The next phase will be defined by trust.
“With the widespread adoption of autonomous AI agents operating at machine speed, the question transitions from whether you can use AI, to whether you can ensure all your data is secure, governed, compliant and resilient. And should something go wrong, can you recover with precision? That’s how you accelerate safe AI at scale without accelerating reputational and operational risk.”
Gain valuable AI experience
The opportunities available to partners that are able to master AI and its security implications are growing. In response, Arrow Electronics has rolled out a couple of networked experience centres, which provide partners with a way to gain skills and get comfortable with tools they can then take out to customer environments.
The centres in the US and Sweden are available to American and European partners and are designed to increase knowledge of AI, security and cloud.
“Our mission is to simplify technology, enabling our channel partners to use it with confidence to solve real-world problems,” said Nick Bannister, president of Arrow’s enterprise computing solutions business in Europe. “Through global connectivity of our experience centres, we can test use cases, create demos and help channel partners understand how to run and secure workloads anywhere in the world, allowing them to create new business opportunities.”
