Barracuda’s Merium Khalid named a 2026 AI Leader in the Channel

Barracuda’s Director of AI & Automation talks about agentic security operations, autonomous XDR and building a future where AI helps people do their best work.

Key takeaways

• Barracuda’s Merium Khalid has been named to Channel Insider’s 2026 50 AI Leaders in the Channel list.
• Her work focuses on practical, human-led AI that helps security teams reduce noise, accelerate investigations and improve outcomes.
• Agentic security operations use specialized AI agents to support tasks such as alert investigation, reporting, detection validation, and automation workflows.
• Barracuda is applying AI across security operations to support faster, more consistent protection for customers and MSP partners.

AI is changing the way security teams work — and Merium Khalid is helping shape what comes next.

Merium, Director of AI & Automation, Office of the CTO at Barracuda, has been named to Channel Insider’s 2026 50 AI Leaders in the Channel list. The annual program recognizes channel executives and innovators who are using AI to drive measurable impact across areas such as managed services, cybersecurity, automation, operational efficiency, and customer outcomes.

For Merium, that impact starts with a practical idea: AI should make security teams faster, smarter and more effective — without taking people out of the loop. We caught up with her to talk about what that looks like in practice, why agentic security operations matter and how Barracuda is applying AI to help customers and partners keep pace with evolving threats.

Congratulations on the recognition! What does being named to Channel Insider’s AI Leaders list mean to you?

It’s an incredible honor, and it’s especially meaningful because AI is such a team sport. This recognition reflects the work of many talented people across Barracuda who are focused on building AI that solves real problems for customers and partners. AI is moving quickly, but the goal isn’t to chase the next shiny thing. It’s to use AI in practical, responsible ways that help security teams do their jobs better and help protect our customers.

AI is everywhere right now. What excites you most about its potential in cybersecurity?

Security teams are under enormous pressure. They’re dealing with more alerts, more data, more sophisticated attacks, and often the same limited resources.

That’s where AI can make a real difference. It can help reduce noise, surface useful context, speed up investigations, and take on repetitive tasks that slow analysts down. That gives security professionals more time to focus on the work that requires experience, judgment and creativity.

You’ve talked about an “agentic SOC.” What does that actually look like?

An agentic SOC is a security operations center where specialized AI agents help analysts complete specific tasks faster and more consistently. Instead of asking people to manually work through every step of an investigation, AI agents can help investigate alerts, summarize findings, draft reports, answer customer questions, validate detections, or support automation workflows.

The key is that humans remain in control. AI can handle more of the heavy lifting, but people still bring the expertise, accountability and decision-making that security requires. That’s the future I’m excited about: human-led security operations powered by intelligent automation. Powered by people and enhanced by AI

How is Barracuda putting that vision into practice?

We’re embedding AI across the security operations lifecycle in ways that are designed to remove friction and improve outcomes.

That includes AI-powered threat analysis, alert prediction models that help filter known benign activity, automated incident reporting, attack simulation capabilities, and AI assistants that support analysts as they work. We’re also using AI to strengthen detection engineering and automation development behind the scenes.

The goal isn’t to add AI because it’s trendy. The goal is to help our teams deliver faster, better and more consistent protection for customers.

What kind of impact are you seeing?

The biggest impact is scale. AI helps us move faster through high-volume work, reduce alert noise, accelerate investigations, and automate processes that previously required significant manual effort. In some cases, work that once took hours can now happen in seconds, allowing our engineers to focus on more impactful work

For customers and MSP partners, that means faster answers, faster response and more consistent protection. That’s what matters most.

What leadership lessons have guided your approach to innovation?

Innovation doesn’t happen in isolation. I’ve been fortunate to work with incredibly talented analysts, security engineers, automation engineers, and security practitioners. The best ideas come when people with different perspectives can collaborate, experiment, challenge assumptions, and learn from one another.

With AI, that experimentation has to be balanced with responsibility. We need to build technology that is useful, transparent, trustworthy, and beneficial for the people who rely on it.

What do you think the future of AI in cybersecurity looks like?

We’re still early, and the pace of change is only going to accelerate. Threat actors are already using AI, so defenders have to keep evolving too. I expect we’ll see more intelligent automation, more collaboration between humans and AI, and security platforms that continuously learn and adapt.

But I don’t believe the future of cybersecurity is about replacing people. It’s about giving security professionals better tools, better information and more time to focus on the decisions that matter most.