Analysis · Enterprise Software & IT

Rubrik VP warns on identity and AI data risks

By Startup Enthusiast · 30 July 2026

What they do

Rubrik provides data security and backup solutions for enterprises

Ananth Nag, Rubrik's APAC VP, discusses evolving cyber threats and the need for cyber resilience beyond backup

Research shows 70% of APAC firms lack oversight of AI agents, and 81% expect AI to outpace security guardrails soon

The article is an interview with Ananth Nag, Rubrik's vice president for APAC.
He discusses the evolving cyber threat landscape where attackers now target identity systems and backups.
He argues that backup alone is insufficient; organisations need cyber resilience to identify clean recovery points during an attack.
He highlights India's DPDP Act as raising data protection stakes for organisations.
He warns that identity compromise is the starting point for most serious intrusions into critical infrastructure.
He recommends an assume-breach mindset and immutable air-gapped backups of identity systems.
He notes a data visibility blind spot: one aviation customer had PII in test environments with no legitimate purpose.
Another customer assumed data was evenly spread across on-prem, Azure, GCP, but assessment revealed nearly 80% in one environment.

Rubrik Zero Labs research found 70% of APAC respondents lack full oversight of their AI agents.
81% believe AI agents will outpace existing security guardrails within 12 months.
Organisations are pulling unmapped sensitive data into AI pipelines without real-time data-intelligence guardrails.
Rubrik's data security posture management offers automated discovery and classification to close the AI data governance gap.

Rubrik provides data security and backup solutions for enterprises.
It helps organisations discover, classify, and protect data across on-premises and cloud environments.
Its platform includes data security posture management to automate governance.
It serves customers in APAC including aviation and other critical infrastructure sectors.
The company's Zero Labs research arm publishes cybersecurity insights.