Frankly Speaking - How private equity foreshadows cybersecurity market consolidation

Private equity revealed the inefficiencies

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Cybersecurity market and vendor growth

Without a doubt, the number of cybersecurity products has ballooned over the past decade. This growth is a response to market expansion and increased demand as well as increased organizational investment in security. However, it’s also resulted in cybersecurity vendor bloat at companies.

Cybersecurity organizations are historically buyers rather than builders, i.e. they tend to buy products rather than build their own. A major reason for this is that most cybersecurity product needs are similar as they are trying to prevent similar risks, i.e. they all have essentially the same enemy, attackers, making it easy to productize many necessary tools. However, new technologies have emerged and changed the threat landscape as well as the cybersecurity needs of organizations, leading to a proliferation of tools.

Vendor bloat

The problem is that many cybersecurity tools have narrow use cases. This is great for a startup that needs somewhere to start and focus on without having to boil the ocean. However, this is problematic as many of these tools and companies never expand their use cases. As a result, companies end up with many dedicated point solutions.