Summary

Mike Rothman discussed trends in cyber security, including those driven by the move to the cloud, business transformation and Work From Home. Some trends that have been accelerated by the pandemic are temporary; other trends that have accelerated will persist. An example of a temporary trend is the increase in demand for legacy solutions for remote workers. These include SSL/VPN as solutions from vendors including Citrix, F5, Fortinet, Check Point, Palo Alto Networks and Cisco. On the other hand, solutions to connect remote works that are based on newer architectures have also been accelerated and they expect demand for those solutions to persist, including SASE (Secure Access Service Edge) solutions from Zscaler, Palo Alto and a growing list of competitors. Other security trends that have been accelerated by the crises and are expected to persist include End Point Protection (CrowdStrike, SentinelOne (anticipated IPO) and Microsoft) and Identity Management (SailPoint, Okta, Ping Identity and CyberArk). The firewall segment of the security market is in transition. The adoption of “cloud native” architectures reduces demand for firewalls. The vendors in this market (Check Point, Fortinet, Palo Alto and Cisco) are all working to make the transition to more software and cloud centric solutions. Each has a different approach. Palo Alto was highlighted as being farthest along with their cloud security solution set. Tom Morphis added views based upon ongoing channel checks. This supported expected outperformance by Zscaler and CrowdStrike. Rapid7 and Varonis were highlighted as less known mid-cap vendors with unique product portfolios and who are executing well in target market segments. Other vendors discussed with positive views offered included Splunk, Mimecast and Proofpoint.

Topics