CRN’s list of key cybersecurity products released during the first half of the year includes offerings for boosting AI visibility, access control and agentic security.
The first half of the year continued to see a strong pickup in demand around the industry for AI and agentic security—a category that increasingly touches related segments, from identity protection and data security to security operations, as well. Many of the biggest product launches in cybersecurity for the initial six months of 2026 have brought a focus around delivering deeper visibility, stronger access control and greater automation for defenses related to usage of AI applications and agents.
[Related: How AI Agents Are Making Identity Security More ‘Critical’ Than Ever: Partners]
Notably, top vendors in recent months have unveiled new tools for protection of AI prompts and agent interactions, discovery of shadow AI usage and security for agent-to-agent communications, as well as capabilities for ensuring strong governance for sensitive data wherever it’s located.
Even amid the ongoing hype cycle around AI, solution providers such as New York-based Presidio have remained focused on working with vendors that are delivering meaningful new capabilities for securing AI usage, according to Justin Tibbs, vice president for cybersecurity at Presidio, No. 26 on CRN’s Solution Provider 500 for 2026.
“Our job is to filter [out] the noise of that hype cycle for our clients and say, ‘This is the reality of the product. This is what the product or solution can achieve. This is absolutely what it will not achieve,’” Tibbs said. “That’s for us to go out and explore and understand—so that when we bring things to our clients, it’s of value to them.”
As part of CRN’s midyear 2026 coverage, we’ve selected 10 cybersecurity products that have been on our radar this year thanks to their combination of technical advancements and opportunities for channel partners. To better understand the products, CRN has recently spoken with CEOs, CTOs and other key executives at each of the companies including CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Zscaler and SentinelOne.
What follows are the details on 10 of the hottest cybersecurity tools and products of 2026 so far.
1Password Unified Access
1Password announced the debut of its new unified access platform that aims to provide improved discovery, security and audit access for all identities. The new 1Password Unified Access offering covers human, machine and AI agent identities, providing a “clear operating model” for access security in the AI area, the vendor said in a news release. Ultimately, the offering “allows security leaders to start to get their hands around one of the biggest threats” they are facing related to agentic identities, 1Password CEO David Faugno told CRN.
Arctic Wolf Aurora Agentic SOC
Arctic Wolf announced the launch of what it’s calling the “world’s largest agentic SOC” (Security Operations Center). The debut of the Aurora Agentic SOC will deliver improved AI-driven security outcomes along with substantial reductions in cost and complexity, Arctic Wolf CEO Nick Schneider told CRN. The system will leverage the new Aurora Superintelligence Platform, which “combines a proprietary knowledge graph along with our swarm of agents” to handle key security tasks, Schneider said.
Cloudflare Mesh
Cloudflare unveiled a new private networking offering that is aimed at enabling stronger security for usage of AI agents. Cloudflare Mesh enables security teams to deploy policies that are highly granular while protecting access to private services for the organization, the company said. The offering ultimately delivers a “full secure stack for AI agents,” Cloudflare said in a news release. The move comes as Cloudflare is also doubling down on its channel strategy with what the company has called “our biggest commitment yet on how we co-invest” with top solution and service provider partners, Cloudflare Chief Partner Officer Tom Evans told CRN.
CrowdStrike Falcon AIDR
CrowdStrike announced general availability for its Falcon AI Detection and Response (AIDR) offering, which aims to deliver a massive boost to security around AI prompts and agent interactions. Falcon AIDR provides the industry’s most comprehensive approach so far to protecting organizations against some of the key risks caused by surging AI adoption, according to the company. AIDR is a natural area of expansion for CrowdStrike given how crucial endpoint protection is for securing usage of AI and agentic applications, CrowdStrike co-founder and CEO George Kurtz told CRN in March. “The endpoint is really the manifestation of where AI takes place,” Kurtz said.
Netskope One AI Security
Netskope debuted a suite of new AI security products within its Netskope One platform. The Netskope One AI Security portfolio includes capabilities such as the Netskope One Agentic Broker, which offers “visibility and control over all MCP transactions whether sanctioned or unsanctioned,” the vendor said in a news release. The move comes as Netskope has ramped up efforts with the channel through the recent launch of its Netskope Catalyst MSP/SP Program, designed to accelerate growth with partners for the vendor’s AI-powered SASE platform, according to Kristin Carnes, vice president for global channel programs and strategy at Netskope.
Palo Alto Networks: Prisma AIRS 3.0
Palo Alto Networks unveiled the next generation of its AI security platform with the debut of Prisma AIRS 3.0. The offering features a number of new capabilities for discovery and assessment of AI agent activities, according to Lee Klarich, chief product and technology officer at Palo Alto Networks. Many of the enhancements in Prisma AIRS 3.0 are “oriented toward AI becoming more agentic in nature,” Klarich told CRN. Palo Alto Networks also previewed a forthcoming Prisma AIRS capability, AI Agent Gateway, “which will allow us to actually sit in the flow of agent-to-agent communication and secure that traffic,” he said.
Proofpoint: DSPM Expansion
Proofpoint announced that it’s extending its capabilities for AI-powered DSPM (data security posture management) to on-premises environments. For the many partners and customers seeking to enable AI adoption right now, the move enables teams to provide data access at the proper privilege level no matter where it’s located, Proofpoint CEO Sumit Dhawan told CRN. “All your data is protected, regardless of where the data is—using our agentic AI technology that discovers, classifies and protects it,” Dhawan said. “And then our AI security ensures that you have both visibility and guardrails over all the AI actions.”
SentinelOne: Prompt Security Expansion
SentinelOne debuted a new Prompt Security offering that protects AI usage within on-premises environments, including sovereign and air-gapped data centers. The Prompt Security On-Premise offering provides self-hosted AI security, with discovery for unsanctioned “shadow AI” usage and real-time redaction of sensitive data. The company also introduced capabilities for protecting agents and agentic workflows with the launch of its Prompt AI Agent Security offering. While many vendors see securing AI as primarily a technological discipline, “I think it’s really more of a shift of how you bring together visibility and observability—but all the way to the human operator,” SentinelOne co-founder and CEO Tomer Weingarten told CRN. “And I think that’s the fabric we’re essentially trying to solve.”
ThreatLocker: Zero Trust Network And Cloud Access
ThreatLocker’s zero trust network and cloud access offering brings the vendor’s deny-by-default approach in a bigger way to SaaS and mobile devices, ThreatLocker Co-founder and CEO Danny Jenkins told CRN. ThreatLocker is brokering network traffic rather than tunneling it through a VPN—which offers massive advantages for user experience and performance, according to Jenkins. For zero trust cloud access, meanwhile, ThreatLocker is protecting against the effectiveness of compromised credentials in key SaaS applications such as Office 365, Salesforce, Jira and ConnectWise, he said. ThreatLocker has long seen its zero-trust security platform as “a vault door on a bank” when properly configured, Jenkins said. “We’ve always done that on the endpoint, and now we’re extending that to the cloud and to mobile device.”
Zscaler AI Access Graph
Zscaler launched a new offering that provides a way to see the connections across identities and applications, as well as other data sources throughout an organization, in order to ultimately provide improved enforcement of security policies and reduce risk. The offering leverages Zscaler’s acquisition of Symmetry Systems and will be pivotal for securing communications between AI agents, according to the company. “We know that when so many agents [are deployed], they’ll spawn further agents,” Zscaler founder and CEO Jay Chaudhry told CRN. “Who is talking to who? The access graph is the best way to figure that out.”
