Markets are rattled as oil surged past $100 a barrel this month. And yet, some of the smartest money on Wall Street is pointing investors toward one corner of the technology sector that tends to thrive when the world gets more dangerous: cybersecurity.
Wedbush Securities, among the more bullish tech-focused research houses, emphasized that the ongoing selloff in the software sector is overblown. The investment firm sees the turbulence as a buying opportunity, and one stock at the top of its shopping list is Rubrik (RBRK).
Wedbush has a stock price target of $86 for Rubrik, above the current price of about $49. Valued at a market cap of $9.8 billion, RBRK stock is down 53% from all-time highs.
Cybersecurity companies are typically recession-resistant. Moreover, they are poised to thrive amid periods of geopolitical instability and could outperform the broader markets.
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives and his team flagged in a recent research note that escalating tensions in the Middle East, oil prices above $100 per barrel, and potential disruptions at the Strait of Hormuz are fueling volatility across the broader market. But Wedbush argues that the current environment strengthens the case for cybersecurity investment.
The threat to nation-states heightens the urgency of protecting critical data infrastructure. In such a scenario, governments and enterprises accelerate spending on cyber defense solutions.
Wedbush highlighted several cybersecurity names as top picks in this environment, including CrowdStrike (CRWD), Palo Alto Networks (PANW), Zscaler (ZS), Check Point Software (CHKP), and Rubrik. The firm also pushed back on the idea that artificial intelligence is eating into cybersecurity demand.
Rubrik is a California-based company that offers a platform for data protection, threat analytics, identity recovery, and AI agent security. It serves customers in financial services, healthcare, energy, government, and other sectors where data loss or a ransomware hit can be catastrophic.
Chief Executive Officer Bipul Sinha described it plainly on the company’s most recent earnings call, calling Rubrik the bunker underneath the house. Sinha stated, “When ransomware inevitably hits, a LLM or vibe code will not recover your business. Rubrik will.”
