Channel Brief: AI adoption is surging, but mid-market security is falling behind

AI is already everywhere in the mid-market. The problem is that governance and security have not caught up. Netrio’s latest survey shows that AI adoption is already widespread across the U.S. mid-market, even as many organizations struggle to scale it safely. The survey found that 82% are using AI in production or across multiple parts of the business, but only 26% said AI is scaled and governed enterprise-wide. Security, privacy, and compliance ranked as the top barriers to broader adoption, followed by data readiness and integration complexity. Those concerns are already showing up in practice: 42% of respondents reported a confirmed AI-related security incident or exposure in the past year, while another 31% reported a near-miss.

Kaseya’s 2026 SaaS Security Report adds more detail to that risk picture by showing how weak identity controls, external access, and unmanaged integrations are expanding the attack surface. Based on 27.6 billion SaaS security events across more than 50,000 SMB environments, the report found that guest users accounted for 69% of monitored accounts, 56% of accounts lacked active MFA and 20% of critical alerts involved non-human service principals. Together, the reports point to a clear channel opportunity. As customers increase AI spending, MSPs will need to connect AI governance with SaaS security, identity management, OAuth monitoring, MFA enforcement, external sharing controls and ongoing managed oversight.

This Week's Tech, Channel, and MSP News

DNSFilter opens OEM program for embedded DNS protection: DNSFilter launched an OEM and Embed Partner Program that lets ISPs, security vendors, device makers, consumer app developers, and MSSPs embed DNSFilter Protective DNS, Guardian Firewall, and VPN services into their own platforms. Partners can choose resell-and-bundle, embedded headless, or white-label co-brand models, with SDK access and sandbox tools meant to shorten integration work. The channel angle is pretty clear: DNSFilter is moving beyond traditional MSP resale into embedded security distribution, giving partners another way to package DNS-layer protection inside their own offerings instead of selling it as a standalone tool.

Haven asks MSPs to shape its browser security platform: Haven, the AI browser security extension from MirrorTab, opened a Design Partner Program for growing businesses and MSPs. The program gives participants early access to upcoming administration and reporting tools and lets MSPs influence how Haven handles deployment, policy controls, and risk visibility across multi-client environments. This one is early-stage, but it fits the MSP stack conversation because browser-layer security is becoming another place where providers can show client risk, especially around phishing, fake sites, and login-page exposure.

Blackpoint Cyber adds AI SOC agent for MSP identity threats: Blackpoint Cyber introduced an AI SOC agent for identity threat detection and response, focused on credential-based attacks against Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace accounts. The company says the agent can detect and contain some high-confidence threats, including token theft and business email compromise, at machine speed with human oversight. The MSP angle is that Blackpoint trained the capability on analyst decisions, forensic evidence and telemetry from more than one million protected endpoints across its MSP customer base, which positions the launch as an operational scale play for managed security providers.

Infoblox agrees to acquire Kentik: Infoblox entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Kentik, a network intelligence and observability company. The deal would combine Infoblox’s DNS, DHCP, IPAM, and network services capabilities with Kentik’s network observability platform. I’d treat this as a secondary ChannelE2E fit rather than a pure MSP item, but there is a channel services angle for providers building networking, DDI, cloud visibility, and infrastructure operations practices around hybrid and multi-cloud environments.