IT Ops, SecOps, and data governance teams have hard jobs, now amplified by every enterprise’s rush to push AI experiments into production. At times, they may be pitted against each other with competing priorities and conflicting tool capabilities. The one time they unite as Digital Trailblazers is in responding to priority incidents that impact revenue, customers, employees, and brands.

I recently attended three conferences from companies that aim to simplify the work of these groups. I reviewed the latest in AI and data governance at Collibra’s Data Citizens 25, autonomous IT at Tanium’s Converge, and ResOps data protection at Commvault’s SHIFT.

My write-up here doesn’t cover all their announcements and even some of the bigger AI innovations in their roadmaps. Instead, I selected unifying, pragmatic features that address issues everyone I know in technology, data, and security roles has encountered.

Collibra transforms data catalogs into products

Data catalogs are a necessity for any organization supporting citizen data science, developing extendable ML models, or operating in regulated industries with data compliance requirements. They centralize metadata around data sources, access policies, data classifications, and data dictionaries to help the right people find and utilize the right datasets for decision-making.   

But what data scientists and data governance leaders really want is to upgrade catalogs into centralized data products. They aim to simplify access to trusted data and improve lifecycle management. Collibra’s platform capabilities include

• demand prediction for capturing where stakeholders need data products,
• data contracts to establish data quality SLAs,
• an AI model registry to extend the usefulness of the data catalog, and
• an AI data recommender to help end-users find data products.  

I asked Stijn Christiaens, co-founder and chief data citizen at Collibra, why data products are a transformation force multiplier.

“By viewing data as a valuable product, rather than a mere byproduct, organizations can generate tangible value. These data products are key to enabling faster innovation, providing superior inputs for AI models, and opening up new revenue sources through both internal and external marketplaces. In 2026, the companies that operationalize it will lead their industries.”

Tanium’s “Jump Gate” enables zero-trust admin privileges

Tanium provides capabilities for IT Ops, SecOps, and risk management teams around endpoint protection. At Converge, Tanium expanded endpoint coverage to include IoT, mobile, and other industrial devices. They are also growing beyond patch management and threat detection through partnerships with Microsoft and ServiceNow.

The feature that intrigued me most is called Tanium Jump Gate.

IT and security leaders are challenged about whom to grant admin access to, in preparation for when remediation activities are necessary. Providing too many people access creates security risks, but overly limiting access can delay recovery efforts when the selected admins aren’t available.

Tanium Jump Gate provides a rule-based, zero-trust approach to granting access. It’s a capability all organizations need as they shift to autonomous responses led by AI agents.

I discussed Tanium Jump Gate with Tim Morris, Tanium’s chief security advisor, who explained why IT and security are excited about the capability. “If you look at all the breaches, the root cause comes down to one thing: unauthorized access. It typically comes through exploited vulnerabilities, stolen credentials via phishing, or insider threats. Never trust, always verify is even more important today, with non-human identities and AI agent-to-agent protocols.”

Commvault helps orchestrate multicloud data restores

Attacks are ongoing and breaches are inevitable. It’s how well IT Ops and SecOps partner on recovery that makes the difference.

But recovering point-in-time data in multicloud, multilayered architectures isn’t a given. And knowing that the restores are from clean backups is another issue. How are financial services, hospitals, and other businesses with real-time, mission-critical data creating clean, complete, and automated cyber recovery plans?

“It’s a business-critical necessity to conduct clean recoveries,” said Pranay Ahlawat, chief technology and AI officer at Commvault. “We’re enabling that in a new and innovative way while automating recovery validation so that every customer can recover with confidence.”

Commvault’s unified data protection is hybrid/multicloud. Its conversational AI enables users to manage backups, recovery, and monitoring through natural, chat-based interactions.

Breakthrough capabilities drive operational resilience

What do these three capabilities have in common?

First, they are pragmatic capabilities that address operational gaps in all companies. Duplicate data is costly and risky. Enabling broad admin access is a significant cyber risk. Flaky backups hamper recovery efforts.  

These capabilities also unify three different teams, IT Ops, SecOps, and data governance, on their missions and approaches to operational resiliency. Alignment drives efficiencies and better results.  

For many IT organizations, it may be time to converge teams, shift priorities, and safely empower data citizens.