GSX 2026: Focus on technology, integration, people leaves geopolitical risk as a major gap

September 23, 2026

GSX 2026: Focus on technology, integration, people leaves geopolitical risk as a major gap

‍Global Security Exchange, September 14–16 at the Georgia World Congress Center, Atlanta

GSX covered a wide range of topics during its annual conference last week, with a particular focus on technology, integration, and people, but less discussion on geopolitical risk which CSOs say is a top concern in a recent survey. Here ares ome key takeaways participants are discussing coming out of GSX and RANE’s take.

AI is moving from detecting events to helping decide what to do

Vendors are positioning AI as contextual analysis, alarm prioritization, and escalation support rather than simple event detection, while attendees are weighing how much to automate vs. keeping human judgment in the loop.

What CSOs say: Vendors are providing solutions to a marketplace that has yet to significantly adopt AI into its day-to-day workflow. At the same time, executives now have direct access to AI tools and are increasingly using these to seek answers to intelligence questions themselves, which raises expectations for speed and responsiveness, but also concerns about the quality of AI-produced intelligence as the sole basis for decision-making.

RANE perspective: AI can tell an executive what happened. RANE’s value is helping answer why it matters and what comes next, quickly enough to support business decisions. RANE offers credible analysis, context, judgment, business relevance, and speed.

Buyers pushed back on hype

Organizations feel overwhelmed by the volume of new technology. Incident monitoring is becoming a commodity, and the focus is now on workflow and speed to resolution. AI is seen as one tool among many, and people struggle to discern lasting innovations from passing trends.

What CSOs say: Only 25% of CSOs say their intelligence products frequently influence business decisions, and about a third say they rarely or never do. The audience for security intelligence reporting and deliverables within an organization is growing, with business leaders and cyber teams increasingly reading these, but consumption is not turning into influence. The problem is decision relevance rather than a shortage of intelligence.

RANE perspective: Close the gap by moving from more information, more alerts, and more reporting to five questions: What changed? Why does it matter?Which business interests are exposed? What could happen next? What should the organization monitor or prepare for?

Platforms are converging; robotics and drones are rising

Video surveillance, access control, and alarm monitoring are being folded into unified platforms. Security robots are moving into real workflows, including integration with monitoring. Drones and counter-drone technology were prominent on the show floor.

What CSOs say: CSOs are prioritizing technology spending that turns corporate security into an enterprise integrator by connecting previously fragmented data, systems, and teams using automation, integration platforms, and intelligence and data platforms.

RANE perspective: A key opportunity is automation tools that enable faster synthesis of key takeaways into actionable data, workflow and collaboration tools, and APIs that feed analysis into the sources and reporting tools CSOs already use.

Security roles are overlapping more

Executive protection, threat intelligence, and physical and digital security are converging, with sessions on enterprise security risk management, behavioral threat assessment, and the skills tomorrow’s security leaders will need.

What CSOs say: 60% of CSOs expect their input into enterprise risk management to grow. The roles showing the most growth are in intelligence and in crisis and resilience, while guarding, site-security and operator-level roles are declining; executive protection budgets remain strong. Corporate security is an emerging integrator of intelligence drawn from different areas of the company.

RANE perspective: Give security and risk teams an independent analytical layer that connects geopolitical and security developments to the risks the business is already tracking. RANE goes beyond identifying events to analyzing how they cascade across markets, operations, supply chains, regulatory environments, and drive security exposure.

Geopolitics: a bigger issue than what was discussed at GSX

At GSX,discussions primarily centered on technology, integration, and people.Geopolitical risk was not a headline theme.

What CSOs say: 74% of CSOs now rate geopolitical risk as critical or high, up from 67% in 2025, and 28% rate it critical versus 13% the year before. It ranks alongside cyber, data and IP theft, insider risk and reputation – risks areas that are interconnected and enterprise-wide.

RANE perspective: Geopolitical intelligence is an important input into the enterprise risk picture. Most organizations struggle to understand the potential tangible impacts of geopolitical dynamics and scenario planning, exercises, and red teaming are ways to turn analysis into resilience. The question for companies is not “what is happening” but what the impact will likely be to its people, facilities, supply chain, customers, investments, regulatory exposure, and ability to operate, as well as what comes next. RANE’s business-relevant geopolitical intelligence helps CSOs understand these connections before they become incidents.

The Bottom Line

Geopolitical risk is becoming one of the defining risks facing multinational companies, yet only 25% of CSOs say their intelligence frequently influences business decisions. What’s needed is not more alerts or more data – it’s helping security leaders understand what geopolitical developments mean for their people, operations, markets, and enterprise risk exposure. GSX showed a market rich in detection and automation technology and short on decision relevance.