It's Not All Doom and Gloom for Cybersecurity

Article taken from my blog. 

My recent column on the dramatic decline in headcount growth across seventeen cybersecurity sectors does not tell the whole story. Today I am looking at all the signs that the industry is alive and well.

It is worth noting that the leaders in cybersecurity stocks have had a good year so far. Even Zscaler bounced back from the negative territory after pre-announcing they were going to beat their own guidance.

You can check in on these numbers anytime with this Google Sheet. But Zscaler had its first-ever monthly decline in headcount in April. Off 550 or 8 per cent. 

Most of the others also dropped in April but maintained positive growth in the first four months of the year.

But let’s look at the 1,000+ cybersecurity companies that have grown so far in 2023. Filtering on size of 50-1,000 people there are 209 vendors that grew more than 5% in four months (a 15 per cent annualized rate). They were in these categories and countries.

Of those 209, Data Theorem was on top with a remarkable 132 per cent growth this year to 87.

Data Theorem, an application security solution, has grown organically and is apparently taking advantage of the slow economy to bolster its position. It has nine job openings listed on Indeed.

Half of these 209 vendors are growing at an annual rate of 30 per cent or more! These high flyers have taken in $2.7 billion in funding this year. Here are the top performers so far.

Speaking of funding, 110 vendors tracked by IT-Harvest have taken in new investments so far this year. This is how those rounds were distributed:In total, investors made bets of $3.57 billion in the first four months of the year, on track to hit 2020 levels of $10 billion. Don’t forget that at the time 2020 was a record year for funding. So yes, off 41 per cent from last year, but still not too shabby.

Stay tuned for more analysis made possible by the only platform for cybersecurity industry research.