Consolidation across IT and the channel is significant, but security providers are gobbling each other up like crazy.

Edward Gately, Senior News Editor

June 12, 2019

12 Slides

It’s been a big year for consolidation in cybersecurity this year, with hundreds of millions, and in some cases billions, of dollars being shelled out in headline-grabbing acquisitions.

The list of deals includes cybersecurity powerhouses like Symantec and Sophos, as well as lesser-known competitors like Zix and Radware. Analysts have long said the industry is overcrowded.

Rik Turner, principal analyst at Ovum, said the acquisitions are beneficial in that customers want to buy technology from a smaller number of vendors, and therefore manage fewer relationships.

Turner-Rik_Ovum.jpg

Ovum’s Rik Turner

“I also fully expect this trend to continue for the foreseeable future, and possibly even accelerate if the stock market weakens and IPOs become a more difficult alternative,” he said. “The cyber industry has long been one in which a few behemoths at the high end of the market sit and watch the startups emerge in new market segments, then eventually acquire when they deem the time is right — a sort of a cyber version of Mao Zedong’s ‘let a thousand flowers bloom.'”

Mike Suby, Stratecast vice president of research at Frost & Sullivan, said there’s growing recognition that there’s “no silver bullet” in cybersecurity, and that it takes an assortment of technologies, depending on the risk, that need to be managed. Therefore, it’s more advantageous for businesses to get more technologies that work well together from fewer vendors, he said.

Cybersecurity M&A will continue through 2019 and into 2020, but there are “too many variables” to forecast whether the frenzied pace will continue, he said.

Scroll through our slideshow above for a look at the deals that have taken place so far this year.

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About the Author(s)

Edward Gately

Senior News Editor, Channel Futures

As news editor, Edward Gately covers cybersecurity, new channel programs and program changes, M&A and other IT channel trends. Prior to Informa, he spent 26 years as a newspaper journalist in Texas, Louisiana and Arizona.

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