Following a strong first half of 2025 marked by technology innovation and strategic partnerships, Channel Insider spoke with Vectra AI’s Chief Product Officer Jeff Reed about how the market is embracing AI-enabled security and what comes next.
Long-time AI adopters embrace recent demand as they stay ahead
Vectra AI was founded on the guiding principle that AI technology could revolutionize how organizations approach their security operations. Now, of course, that sounds unsurprising and perhaps even necessary, as the market embraces GenAI and other LLM-based tools.
“There’s a general appreciation for the application of AI techniques in the market, which has been a good thing for us,” Reed said. “Still, there’s a lot of education needed. Some now relate all forms of AI just to mean chatbots or LLM tools, and while those are great for particular use cases, they are far from the only way to leverage AI.”
Reed emphasizes that these unique applications of AI technology have long interested the Vectra AI team, and now those efforts are only accelerating.
“We’re using a dozen different AI techniques throughout our platform to get the best results,” Reed said. “Our internal data science team has experience from so many different perspectives that they can really determine the best ways to apply forms of AI.”
As the market continues to mature in its approach to automation and AI generally, Reed says, these conversations continue to take less time to get to the point in which customers start to see the value of vendors like Vectra AI.
“The good news is that once you get there, the light bulb goes off and customers really start to understand the benefits,” said Reed.
Network security gets a refreshed importance as security solutions become more important than ever
Vectra AI’s platform addresses a multitude of issues within network detection and response (NDR) capabilities. The platform has since its inception simplified an area of security that was always crucial but not frequently discussed with the fervor of more cutting-edge needs.
“We have a running joke internally that network security is cool again,” Reed said. “The network is much more expansive today than it was not even that long ago.”
Reed highlights that part of this re-emergence is tied to the expansion of the attack surface leaving organizations vulnerable to threat actors.
“It’s incredibly important today to address the entire attack surface across the whole environment,” said Reed. “And that resonates with basically anyone we talk to now.”
Of course, all of this goes hand in hand with Vectra AI’s mission to remove burden, noise, distraction, and time-consuming manual tasks from the daily work of SOC experts and security professionals.
“We try to address the other problems that have made security onerous historically,” said Reed.
Partnerships, agentic AI developments, and ongoing education: the Vectra AI roadmap
Vectra AI has so far this year announced technology partnerships with Crowdstrike, Exabeam and most recently with Zscaler.
The integration with Zscaler’s zero trust solutions will bolster how users can access visibility into SASE traffic, significantly enhancing the detection, investigation, and response capabilities they already leverage through Vectra AI.
“We are excited to strengthen our partnership with Vectra AI,” said Naresh Kumar, Head of ZIA at Zscaler, in a press statement. “This integration underscores our commitment to delivering comprehensive and seamless security solutions that support customers’ evolving needs for enhanced agility, deeper visibility, and threat detection. Together, we’re enabling enterprises to securely adopt cloud-first approaches without compromising critical cybersecurity controls.”
These collaborations are a way to expand capabilities and bring the best solution forward to partners and their customers, according to Reed.
“It’s been super busy, but this has been a very good kick-off to 2025,” Reed said. “Seeing where the market is and how network security has evolved over time has shown us that the bets we made a few years ago were the right ones, and they’re really starting to pay off for us.”
Reed says that from a product perspective, the team is continuing to explore how agentic AI and other AI-based models can accelerate efficiency and innovation within the platform. The company’s recent announcements at the RSA Conference point to how it approaches product development.
“We are really at the bleeding-edge of what we’ve done historically and what new technology can bring us in the future,” Reed said.
Vectra AI is deeply invested in the success of its channel partners. Last year it solidified that approach with the launch of its MSSP-focused partner program.