Software stocks are drawing renewed attention as AI adoption reshapes enterprise technology and heightens cybersecurity risks across industries. BNN Bloomberg spoke with Fatima Boolani, managing director and co-head of software equity research at Citi, about how platform scale, data protection and AI infrastructure are driving long-term opportunities in the sector. Key Takeaways - AI advancements are increasing both the scale and sophistication of cyber threats, reinforcing demand for cybersecurity solutions. - Large, integrated platforms are becoming critical partners as enterprises deploy AI across core operations. - Data growth and sprawl are raising the importance of backup, recovery and resilience capabilities. - Observability and system monitoring are essential as AI infrastructure becomes more complex and mission-critical. - Market weakness in software has created potential opportunities in high-quality cybersecurity names. Read the full transcript below: ANDREW: On Hot Picks today, we are focusing on software. Our guest has Palo Alto, the giant cybersecurity provider, as a top selection. We’re joined by Fatima Boolani, managing director and co-head of software equity research at Citi. Thanks very much indeed for joining us. FATIMA: Thanks for having me. ANDREW: Palo Alto, in some ways, it’s the IBM of cybersecurity. People don’t get fired for hiring them. Why? Where do you — I mean, we know cybersecurity is a growth industry. What, in particular, about Palo Alto do you think investors should focus on? FATIMA: There are two very important reasons why we are very decidedly advocating for investors to build bigger core positions in their portfolios with respect to cybersecurity and increase their cybersecurity exposure. The first one is the last two weeks, and more particularly the last week. We’ve seen some very important, consequential, almost tectonic plate-shifting news out of the frontier labs of the Anthropics and the OpenAIs of the world in terms