Top AI-Powered Security Stocks Worth Buying Amid Rising Cyber Threats

An updated edition of the July 15, 2026 article.

Cybersecurity has become a core business requirement, not just an IT concern. Companies are moving more applications and data to the cloud while rapidly adopting artificial intelligence (AI), giving cybercriminals more opportunities to attack. Ransomware, phishing and data breaches are becoming more sophisticated, raising the cost of a successful attack. For businesses, a major breach can mean operational disruptions, financial losses and lasting damage to customer trust.

This growing risk is creating a strong market opportunity for cybersecurity companies. According to Fortune Business Insights, the global cybersecurity market is expected to expand from $218.98 billion in 2025 to nearly $699.39 billion by 2034, representing a 13.8% compound annual growth rate (CAGR). Rising regulations, digital transformation and the need to secure cloud and AI workloads are supporting this growth. Companies such as Palo Alto Networks, Inc. PANW, CrowdStrike Holdings, Inc. CRWD and Zscaler, Inc. ZS are already benefiting from these trends with platforms designed for today's more complex security needs.

AI is becoming the biggest catalyst for the cybersecurity industry. Traditional security systems often depend heavily on predefined rules and can struggle to keep pace with rapidly changing attacks. AI can analyze large amounts of data, identify unusual activity and automate threat detection and response. This allows security teams to respond faster and potentially prevent attacks before they cause significant damage. As threats become more automated and sophisticated, AI-powered security is increasingly becoming a necessity.

Companies like Fortinet, Inc. FTNT, Qualys, Inc. QLYS, Cisco Systems, Inc. CSCO and Okta, Inc. OKTA are well-positioned to benefit from this trend. Each company is embedding AI across its security platform to improve threat detection, simplify security management and deliver better outcomes for customers. These investments not only strengthen their competitive positions but also open new long-term growth opportunities.

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Fortinet provides networking and security solutions to enterprises, service providers and government entities across more than 100 countries. The company is using AI to make its cybersecurity platform faster, smarter and more automated.

FTNT has embedded AI across the Fortinet Security Fabric through its FortiAI platform, which helps security teams detect threats, automate incident response and simplify security operations using generative AI. This reduces response times and improves productivity for customers facing increasingly sophisticated cyberattacks.

Fortinet is also applying AI to enhance network security, secure access service edge (SASE) and security operations (SecOps) solutions. Its AI-powered threat intelligence, supported by FortiGuard Labs, analyzes billions of security events each day to identify emerging threats and deliver real-time protection. These capabilities help customers improve security while lowering operational complexity.

Fortinet's expanding AI portfolio is supporting demand from enterprises modernizing their security infrastructure. As organizations increasingly adopt AI while facing more advanced cyber threats, the company's integrated platform and AI-driven innovations position it to win larger enterprise deployments, drive recurring revenues and sustain long-term growth. Currently, Fortinet sports a Zacks Rank #1 (Strong Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank stocks here.

Qualys offers a cloud-based cybersecurity and compliance platform that helps organizations identify, measure and reduce their cyber risk. The company is extending its vulnerability-management franchise into AI-native risk operations through Enterprise TruRisk Management. New capabilities include InstaScan for scanless detection within minutes of vulnerability disclosure, TruConfirm and Agent Val for exploit validation, and Agent Sara for autonomous remediation.

According to Qualys, the platform can narrow millions of findings to fewer than 1% requiring immediate action, and in live benchmarking, reduce exposure windows from 21 days to minutes while automatically patching 60% of vulnerabilities. These capabilities create a closed loop from detection through validation, risk quantification, remediation and confirmation of closure.

The approach also works with third-party data and multi-vendor environments, which can broaden its relevance beyond the installed Qualys stack. The growing adoption of its risk operations center framework will support Enterprise TruRisk Management penetration within the VMDR customer base and create larger upsell opportunities over time.

Early adoption is encouraging. During second-quarter 2026 results, Qualys stated that the AI-native Risk Operations Center and Enterprise TruRisk Management solution contributed to its quarterly performance. AI could help this Zacks Rank #1 company increase platform adoption, expand its addressable market and support faster long-term growth.

Cisco Systems offers cybersecurity products and services that prevent unauthorized access to system resources and protect from worms, spam, viruses and other malware. The company has been integrating AI into its product portfolios across networking, security, collaboration and observability.

Strong demand for Cisco Systems’ products in developing AI infrastructure has been a game-changer for the company. In the fourth quarter of fiscal 2026, CSCO received $4 billion worth of AI infrastructure orders from web-scale customers, bringing the total fiscal 2026 orders to $9.3 billion.

Data center switching orders continue to register solid double-digit year-over-year growth in the fourth quarter, implying strong demand. These orders are coming from some of the biggest players in cloud computing and reflect growing demand for AI-optimized networks. Cisco Systems is expanding its AI portfolio for data centers with solutions like the Unified Nexus Dashboard, Cisco Intelligent Packet Flow, configurable AI PODs and 400G bidirectional (BiDi) optics.

As cyber threats become more sophisticated, CSCO’s AI-powered platform gives it a competitive edge. These innovations are likely to accelerate customer adoption and support strong long-term revenue growth for the company. Currently, Cisco Systems carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy).

Okta is a cloud-based Identity and Access Management (IAM) solution provider. The company is using AI to enhance its identity security platform while helping enterprises adopt AI applications securely.

Okta has introduced AI-powered capabilities across its Identity Threat Protection and Identity Security Posture Management solutions to detect unusual login behavior, identify compromised accounts and automate risk-based access decisions in real time. These features improve security while reducing the burden on IT teams.

Okta is also enabling organizations to securely manage access to generative AI applications and AI agents through its Workforce Identity Cloud and Customer Identity Cloud platforms. As businesses deploy more AI tools, identity management is becoming increasingly critical, creating a new growth opportunity for the company.

With identity remaining at the center of enterprise security, AI initiatives strengthen customer retention, expand cross-selling opportunities and position this Zacks Rank #2 company to benefit from the growing adoption of AI-powered enterprise applications.

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