Issue #15 Ten Opportunities Hiding in the AI Security Certification Wave

Monetize the AI security wave before 2026 hits.

Hey High Stakers

Good morning and welcome to the 15th issue of High Stakes!

AI security rules are reshaping GTM plans, as this quick research of 10 new revenue plays shows. They cover a variety of service providers and serve real enterprise buyer persona.

Quick Briefing

Come to think of it, the AI equivalent of SOC 2 is taking shape. It appears that by early 2026, major enterprises will start refusing GenAI production releases that aren’t backed by verifiable security certification.

I’ve been seeing this coming up more and more in briefings, buyer RFPs, and vendor roadmap debates. GRC teams are no longer asking “if.” They’re asking “by when.”

But buried in this fear is a massive upside. A wave of AI security spending is snowballing. And if you’re on the sell side – hyperscaler, SaaS, IT services, or advisory, like us – there are 10 distinct moves you can prep today and monetize by January 2026.

This is what today’s edition is all about. Read this as a high-level Business Development Brief, rather than a strategic market analysis.

Opportunity Map: What Buyers Will Need (and How Fast)

So without much ado, let me get into the list of 10. But what was the logic of this listing?

The opportunities are listed in the order of:

• Whether the “Buyer Need” is Clear, Emerging or Nascent, and

• Whether the “Market Traction” (e.g. CAGR, urgency) is High, Medium or Low.

Which means that #1-3 below are where the Buyer Need is Clear, and the Market Traction is High.

The Countdown of Opportunities

1. AI Red-Team as a Service

You may have come across red-team reviews where even seasoned teams didn’t realize how easily their LLMs could be jailbroken. Sometimes by a single emoji. This is one of the most urgent gaps, and perhaps the fastest to monetize.

• Ideal for: Big 4 offensive security teams, boutique AI pentesters, GenAI-native consultancies. Sell simulated prompt injection, jailbreaks, and behavioral exploits with formal reports.

• Buyer case: CISO under board pressure to prove readiness. Prompt injection attacks rose 4x in H1 2025. Clears a release gate and speeds compliance.

• Example scenario (all figs illustrative): One US insurer finds 37% jailbreak success in an internal red-team. They paused two launches.

• CTA: Productize a 2-week red-team + report sprint, priced per model.

2. Inference-Time Monitoring Engines

I’ve heard this even before GenAI came along. “We found out too late.” But with GenAI production releases, inference monitoring is where trust breaks, or builds, and in real time.

• Ideal for: Observability SaaS, LLMOps startups, hyperscalers with telemetry access. Sell runtime watchdogs that flag hallucinations, PII leakage, or abnormal token use.

• Buyer case: VP Product in healthcare SaaS. Worried about inference compliance. OWASP ranks prompt injection as a top risk. Helps cut risk of reputational damage and fines.

• Example scenario: A European bank uses token anomaly detection to halt an LLM after it outputs live account data.

• CTA: Bundle monitoring with your existing FinOps dashboards as an upsell.

3. Certification Support Services

I’ve read accounts of where clients realize they’re 60 days from audit with NO playbook!

• Ideal for: Advisory firms, GRC-focused SIs, cloud-native compliance consultancies. Sell documentation kits, readiness assessments, audit playbooks, and threat model templates.

• Buyer case: CIO/GRC Head formalizing AI governance. ISO 42001 adoption growing; NIST GenAI Profile sets the bar. Accelerates audit prep and builds exec confidence.

• Example scenario: A US pharma client clears their internal audit in 4 weeks after running a bundled readiness sprint.

• CTA: Publish a readiness checklist and sell a 6-week prep sprint.

4. Model Lineage & Provenance Tracking

You may have experienced this too. In a workshop, I asked what data trained their model. Not a very clear answer. Or different versions. This gap is everywhere, but solvable.

• Ideal for: Observability vendors, compliance SaaS, open-source wrappers with versioning. Sell tools to track model origin, fine-tune diffs, data sources, and release lineage.

• Buyer case: Head of AI CoE facing traceability demands. SEC inquiries now demand model lineage. Helps reduce brand risk and streamline forensic audits.

• Example scenario: A fintech client automates lineage tagging and cuts model rollback time by 60%.

• CTA: Wrap Git-based lineage with dashboard UI + exportable report.

5. Pre-Certified LLMs & Agents

We’ve all seen it: in one bid cycle, the buyer went straight to pre-attested vendors. No time to educate. They want to deploy.

• Ideal for: Frontier labs, vertical SaaS firms, embedded ISVs. Sell SaaS tools or agents with built-in attestations and red-team artifacts.

• Buyer case: CIOs wanting “drop-in” copilots that won’t get flagged by compliance. Tired of backfilling trust post-purchase. Helps accelerate adoption in regulated workflows.

• Example scenario: A financial services firm chooses a pre-certified copilot and bypasses three months of internal review.

• CTA: Launch a “Safe-to-Deploy” label with verifiable test coverage.

6. Policy-as-Code for LLMs

I covered this in detail in one of my recent past editions - where the entire pipeline stalled because someone forgot a tag or some such. Policy-as-code prevents those firefights.

• Ideal for: SecOps SaaS vendors, AI pipeline specialists. Sell declarative rules that deny deploys or inference without required metadata.

• Buyer case: The DevSecOps lead scaling guardrails across 8 AI teams. Manual reviews are failing. Helps reduce release errors and align with infosec tooling.

• Example scenario: A Fortune 500 auto maker embeds policy-as-code and sees a 70% drop in last-minute rollout delays.

• CTA: Offer ready-made policy templates tuned to model lifecycle.

7. CI/CD Eval Gate Plugins

Many infra leads will tell you that they just want one thing: a simple kill switch when models miss security gates. Eval gating is that control layer.

• Ideal for: MLOps tools, GitHub/GitLab plug-in vendors, SaaS workflow orchestration platforms. Sell plug-ins that block deploys unless evals pass or metadata is complete.

• Buyer case: Platform head juggling velocity vs audit pressure. Inspired by internal practices at OpenAI and Anthropic. Boosts audit traceability without slowing dev teams.

• Example scenario: A SaaS client uses eval gate plug-ins resulting in reduced audit prep time by half.

• CTA: Ship a plug-in with 3 default test gates + Slack alerts.

8. Cross-Vendor Attestation Dashboards

If you’ve worked with procurement, you know the refrain: “How do we trust these vendors?” A dashboard? They’re usually all ears!

• Ideal for: GRC platforms, vendor marketplaces, cloud control plane startups. Sell dashboards that compare security claims across LLM vendors.

• Buyer case: Procurement lead struggling to compare trust posture. RFPs now demand explainability + security, but tooling lags. Enables trust-based vendor selection.

• Example scenario: A retail group uses an attestation dashboard to exclude two vendors before the pilot stage.

• CTA: Build “Compare 5 models” demo that exports to PDF for execs.

9. Secure LLM Usage Training

Even senior engineers, I’ve noticed, don’t always grasp prompt injection risks. If you're rolling out GenAI org-wide, training is a fast, strategic hedge.

• Ideal for: LMS platforms, security SaaS with L&D arms, certification firms. Sell role-based microlearning on prompt injection, context leakage, and secure prompt authoring.

• Buyer case: CTO or L&D head enabling safe org-wide AI usage. Most prompt engineers self-train on Discord. Reduces rework and misuse.

• Example scenario: A SaaS firm cuts prompt-related errors by 45% after deploying a secure usage module.

• CTA: Create a “Secure Prompting 101” course for your customer success teams.

10. Token Cost Monitoring + Security Alerts

Somewhere in your logs may be a $5,000 token spike you missed. This is no longer optional.

• Ideal for: FinOps SaaS, cloud security tools, LLM agent observability wrappers. Sell dashboards that fuse FinOps with safety alerts, such as cost spikes, prompt drift, anomaly detection.

• Buyer case: FinOps lead pulled into security without owning models. Prompt abuse IS budget bleed. Prevents overspend and flags silent exploit attempts.

• Example scenario: A logistics firm flags a rogue copilot when token burn spiked 6x post-deploy.

• CTA: Launch a shared alerting channel between FinOps and AppSec.

Final Word: From Governance Tax to GTM Edge

By this time next year, no serious buyer will greenlight GenAI without asking: "Where’s your SecCert trail?"

If you’re a seller, don’t just watch it unfold.

Build products, packages, dashboards, and labels now that future-proof your GTM motion.

• Use the opportunity map to sequence what you build or bundle.

• Name the buyer’s fear before they articulate it.

• Become the trusted guide before a competitor turns up with a checklist.

Security isn’t a blocker. It’s your distribution edge.

Best,
Srini

P.S. By early 2026, “Where’s your SecCert trail?” won’t be a hypothetical; get ahead before buyers start walking away.

Coming up next week: The Grand Plan Behind All "High Stakes" Editions So Far - Revealed!