Gen Digital (GEN) CFO on Personal Cybersecurity in the Age of AI

Gen Digital (GEN) owns a lot of cybersecurity companies: Avast, Norton, LifeLock, MoneyLion, and more. Serving around 500 million customers in over 150 countries, this is a giant of personal online safety. The CFO, Natalie Derse, joined Trading 360 to discuss how the industry has transformed with the advent of AI.

Cybersecurity threats are rising all the time – and the advent of accessible AI has turbocharged the abilities of scammers. In its 2Q presentation, Gen Digital said Hidden Ads Adware was up 77% quarter-over-quarter, Data & ID Fraud breach events grew 82% quarter-over-quarter, and AI voice and video fraud is on the rise. 

In response, Gen Digital is revamping its flagship products, Norton and Avast, adding AI assistance. It is also working with Intel (INTC) and Qualcomm (QCOM) to “bring Norton 360 in leading AI PCs” to help detect deepfakes. It also touts “automatic detection” of deepfakes on YouTube and Facebook. 

AI security is a big deal: we’ve been discovering unexpected problems during AI integration. AI scam tools can crack passwords and compromise databases simply because of their computing power.

But sometimes, an AI program has access to sensitive information but doesn’t understand who has the clearance to see it, unintentionally distributing private data. One example is that Bloomberg reported in May 2023, Samsung employees used ChatGPT to review internal code and documents, and the AI leaked that data. 

Gen Digital does more than anti-malware or ID theft protection: it also works in personal finance. Its LifeLock brand can monitor a user’s finances, and it recently acquired MoneyLion to dig further into the field. 

Its 2Q26 report, released on November 6, reports revenue of $1.22 billion (+25% year over year), bookings of $1.22 billion (+27%), and non-GAAP EPS of $0.62 (+15%). Derse highlighted “eight straight quarters of EPS growth at or above our 12-15% target.”

The company also raised its EPS and revenue guidance for FY26 and approved a quarterly dividend of $0.125 per common share. The stock bounced higher after the report, but is still down 3% year-to-date and 13% year-over-year.

On the performance side, in the 2Q presentation it claimed to have blocked 10B+ attacks and noted that it used threat data to train its AI models. It highlighted blocking 140K AI-built fakes so far this year. 

In the age of AI – and possibly quantum computing next – personal cybersecurity is more important than ever. Gen Digital could be poised to capitalize on that need, but it must continue to prove trustworthy and maintain great customer relationships. 

Watch the full interview below: 

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