LOST: Does Anyone Own This Vendor?

SAN FRANCISCO — A dazed cybersecurity startup was found wandering the RSA Expo floor this week, clutching a dusty banner that read “Next-Gen AI for Cloud Threat Response.”

The vendor, identified as Cylentis, appeared confused but polite. Witnesses said it kept asking people if they’d “seen its product owner” or “knew what platform it belonged to.”

“It looked hungry and said it hadn’t had a roadmap update in over a year,” said one attendee.

Cylentis was acquired in 2021 by CoreShield, a massive security platform known for buying startups, announcing “seamless integrations,” and then quietly losing track of them.

A CoreShield spokesperson first denied knowledge of the company, then later said it “might belong to either the Threat Fusion or Cloud Fabric division — whichever one still has budget.”

No one could confirm which.

After the acquisition, Cylentis was rebranded CoreShield VisionX, then ThreatIQ, then briefly Project Helios before being marked as “Pending Strategy Alignment” in an internal Confluence page. Engineers say the last update they received was a Slack message in 2022 that read, “Hey team, quick pivot — what if we were AI now?”

“We were told we were ‘key to the platform,’” said one former engineer. “Then they revoked our Okta access.”

Analysts say this is common. Dozens of “forgotten vendors” now drift through the cybersecurity ecosystem — once-hyped acquisitions that ended up as half-baked logos on crowded slide decks titled “Unified Platform Vision: Coming Soon.”

At RSA, Cylentis’ booth remained long after closing time. Someone taped up a sign that read:

“IF FOUND, PLEASE CONTACT OUR PARENT COMPANY.”

By morning, the booth had been moved next to the lost badge station and a startup giving away AI-branded water bottles.

Late Thursday, CoreShield issued a brief press release claiming it had “successfully reintegrated Cylentis into its Unified Threat Experience.” By Friday, that same link redirected to a 404 page.

No one has claimed the vendor since, but rumours are swirling that the new AI-focused direction could be attractive to a number of buyers.