Which Cybersecurity Sector Grew the Fastest in 2021?

In 2021, Security Operations was the fastest growing sectors out of the 16 I track. Security Operations includes all the vendors that provide tools to assist SOCs, like XDR and threat hunting and SOAR. (Security Analytics is closely related. That’s where I put SIEMs and graph analysis products.?I used to put SIEMs in GRC because their highest value was to fulfill requirements to log everything. But SIEM vendors have struggled for two decades to make their products actually useful for countering attacks. They are finally making progress.)

The 140 vendors I put in the Security Operations bucket grew by a combined 25% in total head count to 44,718.?Of course SecOps is small compared to the identity space which has 620K employees at 370 companies.

39 SecOps companies took in a combined $1.5 billion in new funding. Investors like the space too.

The growth in SecOps led me to look for a good SecOps image for the cover of Security Yearbook 2022 (pre-order here).?I chose an Image from LMNTRIX, an XDR/Managed XDR company in Australia.

The other big change in the make up of the major sectors was GRC now has the most vendors–412–while Data Security with 406 has dropped to 2nd place. Last year Data Security was the biggest sectory by number of vendors with 379.

Here is a good chart of the the 16 Categories I track.

You can get all of the 2021 data in print form by pre-ordering Security Yearbook 2022 for shipment May 25.

I am also building an app so subscribers can drill down into each sector and query our database. Sign up here for updates on our progress. If you are in North America we will send you a free copy of the first edition of Security Yearbook (2020) which contains the list of vendors by category and a history of the industry.

The Analyst Dashboard targets several use cases:

1. PE and VC firms that research the industry and want to find companies that match their investment thesis.
2. Industry analysts that want to have a complete picture of the entire cybersecurity industry.
3. Corporate dev at big companies that are looking for likely tuck-ins to their current portfolio.
4. End users that are developing short lists for product selection.
5. Marketers that sell to cybersecurity vendors. (Events, certifications, PR firms.)