* [Blog](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog) * [Security Operations](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/) * [AI and Cybersecurity](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/ai-and-cybersecurity/) * Announcing the Public Pre... # Announcing the Public Preview of Cortex Data Security: Unified Data Protection for the AI Era [](https://www.facebook.com/sharer/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.paloaltonetworks.com%2Fblog%2Fsecurity-operations%2Fcortex-data-security-ai-data-protection%2F) [](https://twitter.com/share?text=Announcing+the+Public+Preview+of+Cortex+Data+Security%3A+Unified+Data+Protection+for+the+AI+Era&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.paloaltonetworks.com%2Fblog%2Fsecurity-operations%2Fcortex-data-security-ai-data-protection%2F) [](https://www.linkedin.com/shareArticle?mini=true&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.paloaltonetworks.com%2Fblog%2Fsecurity-operations%2Fcortex-data-security-ai-data-protection%2F&title=Announcing+the+Public+Preview+of+Cortex+Data+Security%3A+Unified+Data+Protection+for+the+AI+Era&summary=&source=) [](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com//www.reddit.com/submit?url=https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/cortex-data-security-ai-data-protection/&ts=markdown) \[\](mailto:?subject=Announcing the Public Preview of Cortex Data Security: Unified Data Protection for the AI Era) Link copied By [Yotam Ben-Ezra](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/author/yotam-ben-ezra/?ts=markdown "Posts by Yotam Ben-Ezra") Aug 11, 2026 6 minutes [AI and Cybersecurity](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/ai-and-cybersecurity/?ts=markdown) [Announcement](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/category/announcement/?ts=markdown) [Data Security Platform](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/data-security-platform/?ts=markdown) [DDR](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/ddr/?ts=markdown) [DLP](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/dlp/?ts=markdown) [DSPM](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/dspm/?ts=markdown) [Public preview](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/tag/public-preview/?ts=markdown) ![Cortex Data Security dashboard showing sensitive data inventory, security posture, and risk insights across enterprise environments.](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/word-image-364968-1.png) Image 1: Cortex Data Security dashboard showing sensitive data inventory, security posture, and risk insights across enterprise environments. Today we're pleased to announce the public preview of Cortex Data Security, a comprehensive data security platform combining new and existing capabilities to secure organizational data. Until now, data security has been the biggest roadblock to AI adoption, leaving teams to juggle legacy tools, manually review duplicate alerts, and worry about blind spots across an ever-expanding attack surface. Enter Cortex Data Security, a new unified platform purpose-built to secure data for the AI era. ## Modern Data Security is an Unsolved Problem -- and it's Holding Back AI AI has significantly accelerated every aspect of business. To remain competitive, companies are under pressure to shift and pivot within weeks, not months. And data is key to this journey, providing the organizational context that enables companies to innovate and create a defensible business advantage in a world where everyone has easy and immediate access to hyper-capable models. There's just one problem. For companies to navigate in this new world, their data must be secure, governed, and compliant, which has yet to be resolved. Since legacy point solutions hail from a previous era, they were not designed to understand how sensitive data is created, accessed, and moved across today's hybrid and AI-driven environments. AI, meanwhile, has entered this fragile reality with no holds barred: [88% of businesses use AI in some capacity](https://www.mckinsey.com/capabilities/quantumblack/our-insights/the-state-of-ai), despite [100% of executives surveyed raising concerns](https://www.pagerduty.com/assets/whitepaper-generative-ai-survey.pdf) about its security risks. And its entry is only compounding the data security challenge. As more organizations deploy AI agents across the enterprise, more sensitive data is created, accessed, and shared at unprecedented speed -- introducing new risks with which traditional solutions cannot keep up. ## How Cortex Data Security Meets the AI-Era Challenges Cortex has created a new paradigm for data security. Replacing ineffective, siloed approaches, the solution was designed enabling organizations to scale AI while keeping data secure. The end result: Cortex provides a comprehensive AI-powered platform that protects data across cloud, SaaS, on-premises, and AI environments. Bringing together unified visibility, endpoint security, AI life cycle security, autonomous response, and integrated DSPM, DLP, and DDR capabilities, Cortex helps organizations secure data everywhere from a single control plane. ![Architecture diagram illustrating DSPM, DLP, and DDR on a unified data security platform with shared governance, classification, and discovery services.](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2026/08/word-image-364968-2.jpeg) Image 2: Architecture diagram illustrating DSPM, DLP, and DDR on a unified data security platform with shared governance, classification, and discovery services. ### What Ships with the Public Preview The public preview includes industry-leading DSPM capabilities for discovering and classifying sensitive data across cloud, SaaS, AI, and on-premises environments. For customers with Cortex XDR, the platform also provides a unified DLP and DDR experience that protects sensitive data in motion, while accelerating the detection, investigation, and response to data threats. Built natively on the Cortex platform, the public preview introduces AI-powered investigation, autonomous remediation, and AgentiX workflows that help security teams resolve data risks at machine speed. ### Unify security across data stores and exfiltration paths Equipped with a common classification engine and centralized inventory, Cortex continuously discovers and classifies sensitive data wherever it resides. As such, security teams gain a consistent understanding of sensitive data, and maintain a single location from which to govern it across every environment. ### Secure the AI life cycle AI pipelines pull data from everywhere -- lakes, document stores, ticketing systems, and code repositories: What ends up in a training set or a prompt is rarely visible to security teams. When sensitive records do get pulled into such training data, it can lead to leakage, with customer information resurfacing in model outputs. In the AI era, security teams must also address new threats such as poisoned inputs, which can degrade a production model for months before anyone notices. Cortex Data Security maps the full AI pipeline -- models, agents, endpoints, and the data flows between them -- and continuously monitors what's moving through it. Sensitive data exposure, poisoning risk, and privacy violations are flagged as they emerge across training, deployment, and inference. And risks are prioritized and benchmarked against NIST 600-1 and OWASP Top 10 for LLMs to give security teams a clear picture of where AI projects stand against emerging standards. ### Embrace agentic automation with integrated SOAR Today, data security teams are buried in alerts. Each one requires manual investigation, which involves pivoting between consoles, correlating logs, working out data ownership, or struggling to prioritize. And when a real issue is confirmed, remediation triggers another round of tickets and handoffs to the teams that own the affected systems, stretching time to resolution from hours to weeks. Cortex Data Security includes a built-in AI agent that investigates, prioritizes, and resolves data security issues at machine speed. Analysts query the platform in natural language such as: "Which AI actors accessed PII in the last 30 days?" or "Show me unencrypted buckets with financial data," and get answers without having to write the queries themselves or to pivot between tools. Remediation actions, such as revoking access, applying labels, fixing misconfigurations directly, and looping in human analysts to make high-stakes decisions, are executed through XSOAR and AgentiX across more than 1,000 integrations. ### Solve for human, non-human, and agent identities Identity and access management are essential to data security. However, with the rapid rise of non-human and agent identities, AI is straining existing defenses. Service accounts often run with permissions that are far broader than what their actual task requires, without rotation or a clear owner. AI agents present an entirely new problem space, as they require wide access to function, pull data at machine speed, and behave non-deterministically. Cortex Data Security audits access for every identity touching sensitive data -- human, service account, third party, or AI agent -- and continuously surfaces permissions that exceed what's actually being used. Stale grants are flagged for revocation, and unused entitlements to regulated environments can be removed automatically. For AI agents, granular data-aware controls determine which records agents can and cannot be reached so that a routine prompt doesn't accidentally surface regulated data. ## Make Data the Cornerstone of your AI-driven Transformation: Get Started Today AI has pushed data security teams into fight-or-flight mode. Cortex Data Security doesn't merely offer an incremental improvement by bolting LLM-powered workflows onto a legacy solution. Instead, it represents a ground-up rebuild of data security -- one designed for the distinct challenges of the AI era. [See how Cortex can help you protect your data everywhere.](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cortex/data-security?ts=markdown) *** ** * ** *** ## Related Blogs ### [AI and Cybersecurity](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/ai-and-cybersecurity/?ts=markdown), [AI Security](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/category/ai-security/?ts=markdown), [Announcement](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/category/announcement/?ts=markdown), [Cybersecurity](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/category/cybersecurity/?ts=markdown), [Must-Read Articles](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/must-read-articles/?ts=markdown), [News and Events](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/news-and-events/?ts=markdown), [Product Features](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/product-features/?ts=markdown), [Products and 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[Machine Identity Security](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/identity-security/category/machine-identity-security/?ts=markdown), [Must-Read Articles](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/must-read-articles/?ts=markdown), [News and Events](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/news-and-events/?ts=markdown), [Non-Human Identity Security](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/identity-security/category/non-human-identity-security/?ts=markdown), [Product Features](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/security-operations/category/product-features/?ts=markdown), [Secure AI Infrastructure](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/ai-security/category/secure-ai-infrastructure/?ts=markdown), [Secure GenAI Use](https://www.paloaltonetworks.com/blog/ai-security/category/secure-genai-use/?ts=markdown) [#### Your EDR is Blind to the Agentic 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