×
RSAC 2026
Confidential
×
RSAC 2026
Confidential
Cognizant has made four explicit cyber bets: AI-speed defense, the Neuro Cybersecurity platform, continuous assurance for DORA/NIS2, and managed resilience beyond traditional MSSP. This program measures whether CISOs recognize those bets today, and turns that intelligence into named-account pipeline in 13 weeks via ISMG's Athena, content, and events network.
The cybersecurity goal for 2026 is simply stated but complex to fulfill: build continuous defenses around AI-driven intrusions at AI speed while also enabling safe AI operations with provable trust.
Vishal Salvi · SVP & Global Head of Cyber Business, Cognizant, March 2026Cognizant has made four high-conviction bets in cybersecurity. The question is whether the market recognizes them, and whether buyers are associating those capabilities with Cognizant or with its competitors.
Cognizant has a differentiated platform, a clear AI security thesis, and a managed resilience mandate. What it doesn't have is independent proof that CISOs understand, repeat, and act on that story, vs. Accenture, Deloitte, IBM, and Palo Alto.
Secure ADLC protects data lineage and model integrity before deployment. AIDR detects prompt injection, context poisoning, and unsafe agentic tool calls at runtime. Enterprise context (RAG pipelines, retrieval systems, institutional memory) is positioned as a first-class security domain.
ISMG's 2025 CISO Engagement Study: AI and machine learning content drew 55.7% of all user interactions, the highest of any topic across a 1M+ subscriber base. Most enterprises have not yet identified a primary advisory partner for securing AI deployments. The category association is still being established in 2026.
Neuro Cybersecurity unifies threat detection, IAM, data protection, and compliance into a single AI-orchestrated platform with one CISO decision-making UI. It's a direct answer to the fragmentation problem most IT services firms cannot address at the platform level.
Platform consolidation is an active 2026 procurement priority as budget pressure forces rationalization of redundant spend. Cognizant has a platform-level answer. Whether buyers know it is the question.
Continuous protection that assumes breach and focuses on minimizing impact and recovery time. Strategic advisory integrated with managed services so clients get a resilience architecture partner rather than an SOC operations team. Priority verticals: BFSI, healthcare, manufacturing.
Managed security services is one of the highest-growth segments in enterprise security spend. CISOs under boardroom pressure need partners who design resilience architectures, not just operate detection tooling. This is the exact wedge Cognizant is targeting.
Shift compliance from periodic audits to continuous assurance: controls, monitoring, and evidence embedded into operations as a standing capability. Neuro's compliance module directly addresses DORA's mandate for continuous threat-led penetration testing that annual audit cycles cannot satisfy.
NIS2 is transposed. EU AI Act high-risk requirements are now in scope for financial services and healthcare. CISOs are actively sourcing advisory partners for gap assessments and ongoing compliance monitoring, one of the most active procurement categories in European enterprise security right now.
IAM and cloud security delivered through Neuro's unified control plane, not standalone implementation work. Identity governance connected to real-time threat context. Application security embedded into the Secure ADLC. The integrated model produces a structurally higher-value client relationship than point engagements.
Zero trust and identity-first security are the dominant paradigms in cloud-native environments. Most enterprises associate this category with product vendors, not IT services firms. This is a buyer perception problem, not a capability gap, and primary research surfaces it precisely.
Each of those four problems has the same root cause: Cognizant is making decisions about positioning, messaging, and investment without buyer data. The ISMG × Crossover Market Intelligence program fixes that. A fielded study of senior cyber decision-makers produces the independent evidence base. ISMG's full-funnel platform closes the loop, turning research findings into named buyer engagement, qualified pipeline, and closed business opportunities. What follows is how each component maps to the gaps above.
RSAC is where the conversation starts. This program is how Cognizant wins it. Coming out of the conference, ISMG's platform and Crossover's primary research combine to turn Cognizant's cyber narrative into independently validated, buyer-facing intelligence, giving the GTM team a measurable edge over Accenture, Deloitte, and IBM before the 2026 buying cycle closes.
A 30-minute call with ISMG and Crossover Research is all that's needed to align scope, confirm the competitive benchmark set, and set a kick-off date. Research fieldwork launches within five business days of sign-off.
