This morning’s IT Governance & Risk Management email shot from Computer Weekly carried a reference to a Burton Group report on trends in the security technology marketplace. Unfortunately it looks like you have to buy one of Burton Group’s services before you can read the report. But the Computer Weekly summary says enough. The conclusion is obvious. And it’s essentially the same as the point I was making six months ago.
Large vendors such as RSA have been forecasting for some time that the security market will consolidate and eliminate the growing army of small single-point solution vendors. In my view that's no more than wishful thinking. In fact I think we'll see the opposite. Burton Group seems to have nailed their colours firmly to the fence that divides the interest of big vendors from small security start-ups. They conclude that “consolidation of the security market will remain the norm, but best-of-breed security firms will continue to emerge to address gaps in technology”. In classic Janet-and-John style, Bob Blakley instructs us that "the bad guys are sticking arrows into the customers and the customers are therefore driving their vendors to cover up the parts of their body to which the arrows are being stuck".
It’s all blindingly obvious. As I pointed out at the start of the year, it takes a long time for new technology companies to be acquired by large vendors. Which provides a growing window of opportunity for start-up companies. And new threats will come thicker and faster because of powerful trends in the business and technology landscapes. You don’t need to employ an expensive analyst to work that one out.