Automation and Real-Time Intelligence Are Now Table Stakes for Managed Security

The cybersecurity industry is moving quickly to adopt Agentic AI. It’s still an emerging area, but analysts are starting to track its growth. Market.US projects the market will rise from $738.2 million in 2023 to nearly $21 billion by 2034.

Tanium joined this trend last month when it expanded its Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM) platform with Ask Agent, an agentic AI feature that brings real-time intelligence, automation, and human oversight together. Ask Agent lets IT and security teams use natural language to get answers, uncover insights, and securely make changes across endpoints, helping them move faster and with more confidence. With AI-driven workflows now built directly into Tanium, teams can investigate issues, troubleshoot, and take action from a single prompt.

In this Q&A, Rick Welther, Senior Director of Global MSP at Tanium, discusses how AEM is evolving as a core capability for enterprises and service providers, why AI agents are reshaping endpoint management and cybersecurity, and what these innovations mean for MSSPs and MSPs looking to deliver more scalable, automated, and intelligent security services.

MSSP Alert: Can you talk a bit about the AEM space? It seems to be a burgeoning space in the security field, with a number of vendors offering it. What is driving enterprises and SMBs to adopt it?

Rick Welther: Tanium pioneered the Autonomous Endpoint Management (AEM) market category in 2023 as an evolution of its Converged Endpoint Management (XEM). Since then, AEM has gained significant market traction and is projected to grow rapidly, with some forecasts predicting a unified endpoint management opportunity of up to $84.9 billion by 2031.

This growth is largely driven by the convergence of three things: 1) proliferation of endpoints, 2) the increasing volume of threats and expanded attack surface, and 3) stricter regulatory and compliance pressures. Not to mention, workforces are more distributed, so things like zero-touch provisioning, remote management, and autonomous remediation are essential to maintaining security and productivity in this environment. AEM has become especially important for small businesses and governments with constrained IT and cybersecurity staff, but also for large enterprises that have a massive pool of endpoints to manage and secure.

MSSP Alert: Can you talk about the introduction of agentic AI into Tanium AEM? When looking at AEM, what can agents do that advances the AEM technology? What will users be able to do now that they weren't able to do before?

Rick Welther: Agentic AI takes Tanium AEM to the next level by combining continuous telemetry, contextual awareness, and autonomous decision-making for real-time insights and actions. Tanium’s Agentic AI can understand IT environments, learn from what has and hasn’t worked, and deliver personalized, intelligent change management suggestions. It elevates human users so they can spend less time managing endpoints and more time making strategic business decisions, like identifying areas for operational efficiency. For example, it removes the burden of manual data discovery by automating and accelerating investigation and reporting capabilities with actionable insights. Tanium’s Agentic AI agents can overall provide a stronger understanding of user environments and offer contextually aware, strategic recommendations to build resilience.

MSSP Alert: More generally speaking, how do you see AI agents rolling out in cybersecurity, and what type of impact do you think it will have?

Rick Welther: AI agents are making cybersecurity systems more adaptive and proactive. With their ability to continuously learn, understand context, and act on collected information, they are greatly increasing defensive security capabilities.

For example, Tanium’s Agentic AI is not just able to detect threats but can also automate remediation - patching, isolating infected systems, etc. This is crucial to cyber operations because it lowers the window between detection and resolution. As agents continue to learn from remediation efforts, their decision-making processes become more refined, improving effectiveness with each incident. This doesn’t remove humans from the equation entirely, of course—oversight is still an extremely crucial part of the process. But Tanium Agentic AI is helping turn cybersecurity into a more dynamic, evolving ecosystem that combines the scale of automation with human intelligence.

MSSP Alert: As far as MSSPs and MSPs, how important is it for them to have an AEM service? Given their growing role with many companies, I'm guessing they need to offer such a service. What role do they have when it comes to AEM?

Rick Welther: The market has shifted heavily toward automation and real-time intelligence, so it’s becoming increasingly important for both MSSPs and MSPs to offer AEM solutions. Customers expect providers to deliver high-value automated services that can reduce the number of manual interventions required—and AEM does just that. With Tanium AEM, customers get access to real-time endpoint management that can reduce operational costs, unify security operations, and automate threat detection, response, and compliance. This also enables providers to scale their operations and standardize delivery across their customer base. As cyber threats advance in both velocity and sophistication, having a unified autonomous system is becoming fundamental for managed security.

MSSP Alert: Is Tanium's new Ask Agent something that MSSPs could use, and if so, how? And overall, how important a role do MSSPs play for Tanium?

Rick Welther: Through Tanium Ask Agent, eligible MSSPs can strengthen how they deliver endpoint and security services to clients. An excellent example of a capability that Tanium Ask Agent provides is the ability to reduce outdated or unauthorized tool usage by identifying and managing software and updates across endpoints. Tanium Ask Agent simplifies deployment through agent-driven automation and human-in-the-loop control, aligning changes with standardized, progressive ring-based processes. This empowers teams to maintain software hygiene while scaling operations efficiently and securely. For MSSPs who have multiple client environments to manage, Tanium Ask Agent can also scale operational consistency across service teams and provide clients with increased responsiveness and transparency into security posture.

MSSPs are vital to Tanium’s long-term business growth and go-to-market strategy. These partnerships act as an extension of Tanium’s platform by expanding market reach and accelerating client adoption. They help organizations of various sizes benefit from implementing Tanium AEM, bringing the platform’s capabilities to a wider range of customers.