In the fast-moving world of enterprise technology, true visionaries are those who recognize shifting tides long before the crowd does. Founded in 2019 as pioneers in advanced data security, Arti Raman (CEO), Pakshi Rajan (Chief Product/AI Officer), and Karthick Mariappan (VP of Engineering) executed a decisive, visionary pivot in 2022—well before GenAI became a global boardroom obsession. Recognizing the imminent friction between rapid AI adoption and corporate vulnerability, this powerhouse founding team channeled their deep security expertise from giants like Symantec, Verizon, and DataRobot to build Portal 26, the industry’s most mature AI Adoption Management Platform.
Today, as organizations rush to deploy autonomous agents and large language models, Portal 26 stands as the essential bridge between defense and offense—helping Fortune 500 companies and highly regulated financial institutions secure their data while accelerating real ROI.
In this candid Q&A, Neil Cohen, VP of Marketing at Portal 26, shares powerful insights on visibility, governance, ROI realization, and the exploding opportunities—and risks—of agentic AI.
1-Tell us about yourself / your co-founder(s).
Our co-founders, CEO Arti Raman, Chief Product/AI Officer Pakshi Rajan, VP of Engineering, Karthick Mariappan, have deep leadership experience in security, AI/Machine learning and product development with companies like Symantec, Data Robot, Verizon and Yahoo. They had all worked together previously before starting the company together in 2019. They are in my opinion visionaries who understood the challenges of AI user consumption before anyone else. As the author of this Q & A, I came to the company as a consultant to assist with marketing, and now serve as VP of Marketing – my previous background is as marketing executive with companies from Fortune 500 to startups. The opportunity to be part of this amazing time in history first hand was too compelling not to join this team and company. Fun fact – all the members of the team have run a marathon.
2-Who are your target customers, and what problem / opportunity do you address for them?
As the AI Adoption Management Platform, Portal26 takes a full-lifecycle approach to manage employee and agentic AI consumption across the enterprise. That translates into value for a number of customer profiles: CISOs and CIO get the security and governance over AI they demand, CFO and Finance get cost controls for tokens, license utilization and understand the value AI is creating. The Chief AI Officer and Chief Data Officer get the data and analytics to understand adoption, evidence-based use cases and agentic opportunities, and success metrics. CEOs and the board room get speed to value – Portal26 accelerates secure, value-driven adoption 70%+ faster.
3-What is your product / solution? Who do you compete with, and what is your USP?
The Portal26 AI Adoption Management Platform provides enterprises full visibility and control of all Generative & Agentic AI to enable the buildout of a secure, trusted, and responsible AI program that lifts long-term organizational competitiveness and productivity. As the most mature AI governance offering, Portal26 is the only platform that uniquely provides full-life cycle management of AI consumption from security to ROI. Portal26 industry-first innovations include the only zero-day ShadowAI detector, the only Licensing Intelligence analytics, the only Value Realization module across generative and agentic AI to achieve and measure ROI, and the industry’s only NIST FIPS certified encrypted AI forensic audit vault.
We’ve had a number of startups follow us over the last 18 months focused only on security, and a number of legacy security providers are attempting to match the depth of our security capabilities. To the best of our knowledge at this point in time no company provides the value realization outcomes of our platform. It is our philosophy that you must combine defense (security) and offense (value realization) into one overall strategy which is not possible with a security only approach.
4-How do you help scale financial services (e.g. new customers, new products or distribution channels), and how can financial institutions partner with you (perhaps with an example)?
Highly regulated industries, like financial services, are some of our best customers. We have banks, private equity firms and other financial services using our platform to ensure they can prevent PII and other sensitive information from leaking, as well as provide the audit and forensics necessary to comply with regulations. Additionally, they are moving quickly to productive adoption as our platform enables them to understand what employees and agents are actually doing (vs. guesswork) so they move more quickly from POCs to production on workflows and agent builds.
We actively partner with our customers to develop new functions and features – a number of our value realization features were done in partnership with financial services companies.
5-What relevant industry trends or market shifts should we be watching? Any research or resources you can point us to?
For CISOs:
AI Governance & Shadow AI is the runaway #1 topic. CISOs are still scrambling to get ahead of employees using unsanctioned AI tools (shadow AI and Shadow Agents ), while simultaneously trying to secure their own sanctioned. For example:
- “59% of employees use Shadow AI at work — yet only 16% use employer-authorized AI tools.” Source: Awareways Shadow AI Trend Report, 2025
- “61% of IT leaders say AI is increasing cybersecurity risks — and only 31% are confident in their ability to address those risks.”Source: Lenovo CIO Playbook 2026,
- “63% of organizations either don’t have an AI governance policy or are still developing one — and 1 in 5 organizations has already experienced a security breach linked to Shadow AI, adding an average of $670K to breach costs.”Source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report, 2025
For CIOs and Chief AI Officers:
The ROI Gap — Activity Without Results: Adoption is near-universal, but value is not. While 88% of companies are using AI in some form, only 6% are seeing clear financial returns. RAND’s 2025 research found that 34% of AI projects are abandoned before reaching production, 28% are completed but never deliver expected business value, and 18% deliver some value but not enough to justify the cost.
With Agents, The Security Attack Surface Has Exploded
Agents so more than assist — without controls they act, constantly. They browse, write, call APIs, execute code, and move data. That autonomy makes them a fundamentally new attack vector that traditional security tools weren’t built to handle. The challenge is acute and omnipresent.
- 48% of cybersecurity professionals now identify agentic AI and autonomous systems as the single most dangerous attack vector (Dark Reading poll, via Bessemer Venture Partners)
- 80% of organizations surveyed reported risky agent behaviors, including unauthorized system access and improper data exposure (Help Net Security, 2026)
6-What is your current stage and traction, and how can our network help?
We are a growth stage company with a mature product trusted by Fortune 500 companies, major utilities, and highly regulated sectors like finance, insurance & healthcare, enterprises.
For us, it is more what we can do for your network – regardless of what stage they are at in AI adoption, the visibility, security, telemetry and insights we provide are essential for long-term success with AI. Security is critical, yet table stakes. Value realization is where companies will win and is rare. We provide both.
7-What’s on your bookshelf or podcast app? Your favorite place for a coffee or a drink?
My favorite place for coffee is – our kitchen. I make a cappuccino for myself, and a pour over for my wife, Lauren, every morning. But if you are in New York City, strongly recommend Suited on John Street near Wall Street. Exceptional coffee, and incredible ricotta pancakes. The book I think everyone should read – Different by Young Me Moon. Essential reading for anyone in business on how to truly differentiate in a crowded marketplace.
The age of unchecked AI experimentation is rapidly giving way to the era of disciplined, measurable, and secure adoption. Portal26 stands out by offering enterprises something rare: a unified platform that delivers both ironclad defense and clear business value.
If you’re navigating the complexities of generative and agentic AI in a regulated environment, this conversation with Neil Cohen offers both clarity and inspiration. Whether you’re a CISO concerned about Shadow AI, a CFO watching token costs, or a CEO determined to capture real ROI — Portal26’s approach deserves your attention.
Ready to move from AI pilots to production at speed? Explore what Portal26 can do for your organization.