Trust is Your Trophy

Every four years, the World Cup focuses the world’s attention onto a single tournament, with billions of fans, devices, and transactions moving simultaneously across ticketing, payments, broadcasts, and stadium operations. The attack surface is huge, the margin for error is zero, and every outage has the world’s eyes on it. Sound familiar?  

In our world, this isn’t a problem that happens ones every four years—it’s a normal Tuesday. This is the first World Cup in the agentic era, where threat actors are no longer only human. AI agents can move data, change configurations, and trigger workflows at machine speed, which means trust can't rest on intent or assumption anymore. The organizations that win won't be the ones that claim they'll never be hit; they’ll be the ones that can prove they can recover.  

“When every outage or integrity issue becomes public in seconds, the champions won’t be the organizations that claim they’ll never be hit; they’ll be the ones that keep critical systems running, prove the trustworthiness of their data, and restore confidence at a global scale.”  - Dave Russell, SVP and Head of Product Strategy, Veeam

⚽️ Ambition Alone Isn’t Enough 

This disparity between ambition and reality is what Veeam's Data & AI Trust Gap report set out to measure. Surveying 600 senior leaders worldwide, the findings are unambiguous: Most organizations don't have an AI adoption problem, they have a trust problem. 83% of CEOs feel pressure to accelerate AI, yet 95% say data challenges have slowed progress in the past year. AI agents are already running inside 88% of organizations, but governance hasn't kept pace. Ownership is fragmented, AI inventories are incomplete, and shadow AI is filling the gaps that approved tooling leaves open. The organizations pulling ahead focus on building the right foundation: Visibility into where data lives, enforced controls, tested recovery, and executive alignment around accountability. This gap is closable, and it starts at the top.  

📋 Understand Your Rival’s Strategy 

Coveware by Veeam's Q1 2026 Cyber Extortion Review makes clear that the attack perimeter has shifted. Attackers aren't breaking in anymore — they're logging in. They authenticate like legitimate users, move quietly across systems, and by the time disruption is visible, they're already embedded in your ecosystem. The good news is that organizations with strong recovery foundations are increasingly refusing to pay, but the attacks themselves are getting more targeted and more expensive in response. Veeam's Identity Under Attack report picks up here, and discusses what it takes to detect, contain, and recover when the attacker looks just like everyone else.   

🏟️ Build a Tested and Trustworthy Playbook 

Agentic AI doesn't just generate content; it also takes autonomous actions on live business data by calling APIs, querying databases, and triggering workflows, often without a human reviewing each step. An over-privileged agent with broad data access and no audit trail is a liability waiting to materialize. Anthropic recognized this when they published their Zero Trust framework for AI agents, built on a principle the security world has known for years but is only now applying to agents too: Assume breach. Don't try to prevent every compromise. Limit the damage when one happens, keep a known-good state, and recover cleanly. The organizations that thrive in the agentic era won't just be the ones with the strongest access controls. They'll be the ones who asked — before deploying a single agent — what happens when one is compromised. 

🏆 Conclusion 

The World Cup doesn't pause for outages, and neither does your business. In the agentic era, claiming trust in your data isn't enough. It needs to be proven through visibility, tested recovery, and the ability to restore confidence at speed. The organizations that win will be the ones that bounce back faster, with data they can stand behind. That's not a trophy you're handed — it's one you build. 

📰 Veeam News 

We're so excited to announce that, for the 10th year running, Gartner has named us a Leader in the Magic Quadrant for Backup & Data Protection Platforms, and we're highest in Ability to Execute for the 7th time in a row. As AI agents start moving at machine speed, we're building the trust layer to match by unifying data security, governance, and recovery for our customers. 

Growing fast is one thing, but growing responsibly is another. Veeam's 2025 ESG Report breaks down how we're advancing our environmental impact, investing in our people, and earning trust through transparent governance. See what responsible growth looks like in practice here.

We believe you can't secure what you can't see. That's why we're proud to be recognized by GigaOm as a Leader and Fast Mover in its 2026 DSPM Radar — validating our approach to giving organizations real visibility and control over their data, wherever it lives.

Lastly, big thanks to everyone who's showed up, cheered loud, and made our watch parties so special this month. See you in July!