These 10 corporations in segments such as email security, identity protection, and security operations have been on our radar at CRN, thanks to their strong expansion and channel investments.
With around 3000 cybersecurity corporations in the market, only a few vendors have achieved the kind of popularity that all corporations aspire to. This organization includes cybersecurity corporations such as Palo Alto Networks, CrowdStrike, Zscaler, and SentinelOne, vendors whose product differentiation, strong expansion, and partner-friendly approaches have given them a major boost with little sign of slowing down. soon.
Then there are the fast-growing cybersecurity corporations that still find themselves in this category, but aim to enroll in those ranks before long.
Out of the hundreds of cybersecurity companies that we’ve been following, we’ve identified 10 that fit this criteria — and whose top executives have spoken with us recently about what makes their approach to security stand out with customers and partners.
[Related: Top 20 Cloud Security Companies in 2024]
We chose these 10 hot cybersecurity companies because they’ve demonstrated major traction based upon achievements such as recent major funding rounds; significant product launches; acquisitions of notable startups; or other big moves. Each of these cybersecurity companies has also invested heavily into its work with the channel, showing a commitment to driving its business with the help of solution and service provider partners.
In other words, we believe the following 10 cybersecurity corporations deserve to be on your radar, if you already are. They work across sectors of the cybersecurity market by adding email security, identity protection, cloud security, security operations, MDR (managed detection and response), and much more.
What follows are our picks for 10 cybersecurity companies worth watching in 2024.
Abnormal Security has a core strength in email security with its platform powered by behavioral AI technologies. The company’s generation can stumble upon anomalous email activity at both the business and user levels, and it excels at working well with Microsoft 365, the partners told CRN. Notable updates to the Abnormal platform have included an expanded protection for the use of collaboration applications.
In August 2023, Abnormal Security revealed that it had surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, and CTO Sanjay Jeyakumar (pictured) told CRN that going public is a long-term goal. “I think what we’re doing [right now] is kind of our first act,” Jeyakumar said, noting that an IPO will be a “necessary step in our journey” at some point.
In January, Abnormal Security hired veteran channel and cybersecurity industry leader Jonathan Corini as its new head of channel sales. “If you look at how Palo [Alto Networks] replaced the firewall industry and how CrowdStrike did it for endpoints, that’s how I see anomalies and email,” Corini told CRN.
Adlumin excels at combining a number of features that vendors occasionally treat as separate offerings, adding controlled detection and reaction (MDR) and occasion control and safety data (SIEM), according to Adlumin co-founder and CEO Robert Johnston (pictured). . Adlumin has “consolidated SIEM and MDR into one streamlined platform,” he said in an interview with CRN. Instead of employing separate offerings or vendors that don’t sync with each other, “those reports live and breathe on one platform” with Adlumin, Johnston said.
In October 2023, Adlumin secured $70 million in Series B funding, with the goal of boosting its expansion into the mid-market and SMBs with channel partners. Adlumin’s technique has been to provide an enterprise-grade security operations platform for the mid-market, while providing a 24/7 controlled option that is suitable for even the smallest organizations, Johnston said.
Johnston served as an officer in the United States Marine Corps, leading several cyber teams, including the Cyber National Mission Force, before leading the National Security Agency’s incident reaction teams. He entered the sector by joining cybersecurity heavyweight CrowdStrike as a senior representative in 2015. The following year, Johnston led CrowdStrike’s high-profile investigation into the security services’ breach of the Democratic National Committee. Russian intelligence.
Aqua Security specializes in protecting the use of on-premises technologies in the cloud through its CNAPP (Cloud On-Premise Application Coverage Platform), that is, with its physically powerful agent that can help with cloud security issues. . Aqua also added agentless analytics tools, adding CSPM (cloud security posture management) for real-time visibility. When it comes to cloud security, “some things can be done without an agent,” Aqua Security co-founder and CEO Dror Davidoff recently told CRN. “But to really have a complete solution, you need to have an agent in position and be able to prevent bad things from happening in real time. ” Ultimately, “you have to be able to respond promptly and decisively if something goes wrong,” said Davidoff (pictured).
Recent product updates from Aqua Security have included the launch of a KBOM (Kubernetes Bill of Materials) to provide visibility into the components of a Kubernetes cluster. Meanwhile, in early January, Aqua Security announced raising a $60 million extension to its Series E funding round, at a valuation “above $1 billion.”
BlueVoyant, a sensing and controlled reaction company focused on protecting Microsoft environments, recently revealed that it has grown by 80% over the last year. In November, BlueVoyant announced the acquisition of Conquest Cyber, a company that specializes in offering cloud security to Microsoft consumers. in the government sector. BlueVoyant said the agreement provides robust cybersecurity assessment and compliance capabilities, with an enhanced ability to identify gaps in consumers’ security posture.
“This is a combination of two best-in-class security operators in the Microsoft universe,” BlueVoyant CEO Jim Rosenthal (pictured) told CRN. “In combination the two of us together will be bringing the Microsoft security stack to more state and local governments than anyone else.”
Following the deal, BlueVoyant also raised more than $140 million in Series E funding.
Cribl offers a data platform that aims to enable improved flexibility and control around security and IT data. The company aims to serve as an “agnostic” data engine, with the ability to route data — including from Splunk — and then place that data into a data lake or take other security-focused actions with it, according to Cribl. “All through our product portfolio, what we stand for is choice and control, and giving people the ability that no matter where the data is coming from — no matter where the data is going to — we can route that data, we can process that data and really give them the ability to put that data wherever is the right place for that class of data,” CEO and Co-Founder Clint Sharp (pictured) told CRN.
In October 2023, Cribl revealed that it had surpassed $100 million in annual recurring revenue, reaching the milestone in 4 years. Cribl said it has become the fourth-fastest infrastructure company to achieve this (behind only Wiz, HashiCorp and Snowflake). Cribl is now an IPO “in the near future,” according to Sharp.
Illumio’s Zero Trust segmentation generation aims to isolate and engage an attacker after a breach, preventing the compromiser from going further even if they manage to gain initial access to a device or system. The company has moved from providing segmentation for on-premises knowledge centers to also covering cloud, multi-cloud and hybrid environments, as well as adding segmentation for endpoints.
The recent moves come with the hiring of veteran channel boss Todd Palmer (pictured) as Illumio’s senior vice president of global spouse sales and alliances. Palmer told CRN that Illumio’s distinct generation and strong commitment to their spouses helped motivate the decision to become a channel leader within the company. For a role that involves building an ecosystem of cybersecurity partners, “you need to make sure you’re [delivering] cutting-edge technologies at the forefront of those big moves,” he said. declared.
Other significant hires come with the hiring of John Kindervag as lead evangelist. Kindervag, a former Forrester analyst, coined the term “zero trust” and described the key principles of the concept in 2010.
To fuel its expansion into the SIEM (security data and event management) market, Securonix introduced its new platform last year, its Unified Defense SIEM. The platform works with data sources from Snowflake’s data lake and scales for the large volumes of security-related data that modern enterprises generate with a cloud-native approach, according to the vendor. The platform stands out for its ability to leverage 365 days of “hot” search data from the Snowflake Data Cloud, the company said.
CEO Nayaki Nayyar (pictured) recently told CRN that her top priority in her first year was to solidify the company’s product offerings, which led to the release of the Unified Defense SIEM. Nayyar said the timing is now ideal for Securonix to ramp up its work with channel partners. “That’s going to be a big growth vector for us,” she said.
To drive the effort, Securonix recently hired Mark Stevens as channel chief from Ivanti, where he had previously worked with Nayyar, formerly the president of Ivanti. Overall at Securonix, “we have pretty big plans for where we want to take this entire partner program,” Nayyar said.
Amid the surge in identity-based attacks, Semperis brings a focus on “identity resilience” and mitigation of threats including exploitation of passwords and other credentials. This is a crucial area in part because most customers now have hybrid IT environments, said Mickey Bresman (pictured), co-founder and CEO of Semperis. “The legacy approach of having an endpoint protection and firewall and so on gone,” Bresman told CRN. “That’s why we believe that identity is the way to go.”
One challenge, however, is that most organizations have extended their Microsoft Active Directory identity system to include a cloud component — most frequently Microsoft Entra ID (formerly known as Azure Active Directory), or alternatively Okta or Ping Identity. As a result, Active Directory has become a massive breach target, with the vast majority of attacks now including some sort of Active Directory component, Bresman said.
Semperis aims to protect its consumers by offering security before attacks that exploit Active Directory (closing gaps); attacks (violation detection); and after attacks (enabling resilience and the ability of organizations to recover quickly). Since then, the company has grown to also offer the same three levels of security for Entra ID.
Recent moves across the company include the appointment of Chris Inglis, former US national cyber director, to its strategic advisory board, which is also joined by other members including General David Petraeus.
Snyk has made a series of recent moves to expand its developer security platform, including with the acquisition in January of a startup that specializes in capturing security-relevant data from live applications. The addition of technology developed by the startup, Helios, will bolster Snyk’s capabilities around correlating code security scans with signals from runtime apps, the company said.
The acquisition follows Snyk’s recent release of a major update to its application security posture monitoring (ASPM) provider, AppRisk. According to the company, the release of Snyk’s AppRisk Essentials tool enables automatic code-based application asset discovery, as well as security policy control and risk-based prioritization. The offering was boosted through Snyk’s earlier acquisition of ASPM startup Enso Security in June 2023.
In a recent interview, Snyk CEO Peter McKay (pictured) told CRN that the expansion of ASPM has helped the company provide greater visibility to application security teams, not just developers. In the past, “we put a very high price on the developer. ” , which focused heavily on the developer experience. In some cases, we may not have focused enough on the protection aspect,” McKay said at the time. “They needed more from us, and that’s what Enso gave them. So we were able to bring both of them. together.
McKay added that those measures allow Snyk to make a greater effort with distribution partners than the company had done before. “Now is the time for us to invest more aggressively in the chain because they’ve already figured it out,” he said. “They see a desire to move left and build security for developers. ”
Last week, a report from The Information indicated that Snyk is continuing to work toward an initial public offering, with its IPO prospectus for investors likely to be filed with regulators within several months. Snyk said in a statement that it “never comments on market speculation or rumors.” McKay previously told CRN that the developer security platform vendor had already completed much of the groundwork for an IPO.
Torq, the “hyperautomation” security startup, offers a no-code system for automating SecOps activities. According to the company, the platform increases the productivity of security analysts by performing many Security Operations Center (SOC) responsibilities more quickly and easily.
In November, Torq revealed it had struck a deal to supply its generation to detection and controlled reaction provider Deepwatch, as the three-year-old company looks to drive the displacement of existing technologies to automate security operations (SecOps), according to Torq . co. -founder and CTO Leonid Belkind (photo). “This is a milestone because [Deepwatch] is one of the market leaders and one of the biggest players in the market,” Belkind said in an interview. “Let them absolutely base their service on [Torq], because their infrastructure shows the point of maturity we have now. »
In January, Torq announced that it had added $42 million in new funding, bringing the company to a total of $120 million year-to-date, amid earnings growth.