Artificial intelligence (AI) is indisputably a disruptive technology. On fears that one currently strong industry it'll disrupt is cybersecurity, investors traded out of titles in the sector on Friday. One of the victims of this trend was Palo Alto Networks (PANW +1.90%), which saw its shares slide by 1.5% that trading session.
Is Claude coming for them?
These worries aren't new, but they were given some oxygen on Friday with news from Anthropic PBC. The privately held artificial intelligence developer, known for its Claude series of large language models (LLMs), announced it was rolling out a new safety feature called (somewhat unimaginatively) Claude Code Security within its AI offerings. It has been released as what the company is calling a "limited research preview" to its enterprise and team clientele.
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According to Anthropic PBC, this scans codebases to flag security vulnerabilities and then suggests appropriate software patches. These suggestions can be reviewed by cybersecurity officials or teams in order to implement solutions.
In its press release touting Claude Code Security, the AI developer seemed to take aim squarely at legacy cybersecurity solutions, writing that its product was built for "allowing teams to find and fix security issues that traditional methods often miss."
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Key Data Points
Don't bail yet
The Claude models generally have a good reputation on the market, so it's safe to assume its new cybersecurity feature is similarly useful. This, however, doesn't necessarily mean it'll be a disruptive (or even destructive) force buffeting the industry. Besides, companies in the space have been using AI for years.
To me, this is a wait-and-see to determine if Claude Code Security is a powerful enough product to steal market share away from the incumbents. I wouldn't panic if I were a Palo Alto Networks shareholder... at least, not yet.
