Research Topic for RSA 2020: Comprehensive Cybersecurity Platforms

What’s Blocking Comprehensive Platforms for Cybersecurity?

Here’s my research topic for RSA 2020 in San Francisco.

Enterprise software goes through a predictable cycle in which point solutions are gathered into suites and then many suites are unified in platforms. For many domains, this offers customers the benefits of a broad set of integrated capabilities that can be the foundation for data collection, transparency, analytics, and automation.

But while many of the larger cybersecurity companies have assembled platforms, it seems that there is a much wider landscape of products in cybersecurity than in other domains of enterprise software.

  • Have platforms in cybersecurity been slower to develop than in other domains?
  • Why has the rise in point solutions been so broad and persistent?
  • Are we entering a phase in which broad platforms will emerge and take more of the share of spending?
  • If not, how will all the point solutions be made to work together?

Please reach out to me at dwoods@EvolvedMedia.com if you have some good ideas about this topic.