Based on the latest reader metrics, SDxCentral sees enterprise and service providers shifting from best-in-class security offerings to platform-centric security solutions.

To get a pulse on what is changing in the security market, we analyzed engagement on over three-quarters of a million security-tagged editorial pageviews on SDxCentral since January.  SDxCentral data reveals a profound shift in how our readers approach securing their IT infrastructure.

The current approach to deploying security solutions is not good enough

This is driven by an accelerated evolution in security threats driven by technology change, geopolitical disruption and corporate espionage — all of which is made worse with generative artificial intelligence (AI) in the hands of bad actors. Adding to this and forcing change is a shortage of skilled talent to operate all of these, increasing threats of CISOs facing criminal charges, more government regulations and cybersecurity's emergence as a regular board-level topic. With the average enterprising managing at least 30 products from 10-plus vendors — many of which have been end-of-lived or acquired by competing companies — it’s no surprise that the current situation is untenable.

While all of the above is well-known, it’s only in the last year that we have started to see the change in the types of content security consumers are reading.

How shifting preferences are changing content consumption

The most popular (non-SASE-related) security articles on SDxCentral can be categorized into four areas: educational articles that help readers identify if they have a problem and how to address it; big picture product and company coverage that explains how a particular vendor fits into a complete solution (i.e., how much of a problem they solve);  industry or product consolidation articles, which help security teams understand future problems with current technologies they already own and operate; and system integration and managed service partnerships articles, which walk executives through where and how to buy, deploy and manage their security infrastructure.

Here are samples of what enterprises are reading:

In case you are wondering what the most-read security article so far in 2023, it’s  Carbon Black breaks from VMware, embarks on independent journey within Broadcom, which was published just a week ago.

Vendor interest

To identify which vendors are attracting the most attention from SDxCentral readers in 2023, we looked at page views for our news, analysis, features, opinion and interview articles tagged with the topic Security. We then adjusted the data by the amount of coverage for any specific vendor to capture the most-read articles by company name. We then looked at views of definitions, glossary listings, vendor research and company directory pages to identify which vendors are most researched by readers on SDxCentral and then we compared Q1 2023 with the last 90 days.  Below are the aggregate results:

Q1 2023 Last 90 days 1 Cisco Palo Alto Networks 2 Microsoft Microsoft 3 Google Google 4 Palo Alto Networks Cisco 5 VMware VMware 6 Kyndryl Cato Networks 7 IBM Crowdstrike 8 Aruba Networks Zscaler 9 Netskope Cloudflare 10 Cloudflare Check Point 11 Okta Aruba Networks 12 Fortinet Fortinet 13 Accenture Netskope 14 Lacework Darktrace 15 Cato Networks Okta 16 Check Point BlackBerry 17 Akamai Technologies Snowflake 18 Swimlane Akamai Technologies 19 Crowdstrike Forcepoint 20 Zscaler Splunk

Note: We excluded primary networking companies like Ericsson, Juniper and Nokia where pure security is a smaller portion of revenue and most of our content about them covers networking.

Looking at the pure play

However, the aggregate list doesn’t tell the full story. Focusing on pure security vendors engagement we start to see which companies are of most interest to SDxCentral readers. Most interesting was reader engagement for the top five security companies on this list increased over 200% since the start of the year.

Pure plays — last 90 days 1 Palo Alto Networks 2 Cato Networks 3 Crowdstrike   4 Zscaler 5 Cloudflare 6 Check Point 7 Fortinet 8 Netskope 9 Darktrace 10 Okta

We next measured interest in how to deploy, operate and manage security infrastructure by our audience, isolating the most-researched systems integrators and managed service providers on SDxCentral tagged with security:

System integrators and managed service providers — last 90 days 1 IBM 2 Kyndryl 3 Deloitte 4 Accenture 5 Verizon 6 Orange 7 AT&T 8 Ingram Micro 9 Bell Canada 10 Boston Consulting Group Observations on security content
  1. Educational content was by far the most-read security content on SDxCentral. This makes sense as our audience is line-of-business executives and technologies looking for perspective to help them make the right decisions.
  2. Microsoft is quietly becoming a security powerhouse. Of the non-security pure-plays, when non-security Azure-centric articles were removed, Microsoft was the only company with a 200%+ increase in engagement.
  3. The companies with credible security platform stories are getting increased engagement with SDxCentral readers, specifically, Palo Alto, Cato, Crowdstrike and Zscaler.
  4. Cisco’s drop in ranking was a bit of a surprise until we looked at two broadly read articles, one Nancy Liu’s,  Can Cisco transcend its networking success to become a top 3 security powerhouse? And its revenue and earnings miss as reported by Emma Chervek: Cisco misses guidance, stock plunges – CEO says, ‘we feel pretty good’.
  5. To put in perspective enterprises and service providers need to help consuming and operating security technologies, articles about IBM and Kyndyl were more read than articles about Checkpoint over the span of 2023.
Takeaways on security trends
  1. Current security approaches are no longer good enough given the rapidly changing technology, geopolitical, staffing and threat landscape.
  2. Readers are starting the shift from best-in-class security to platform-centric security because the current approach of assembling point products from a collection of vendors is no longer good enough to keep their business safe.  We see this from the trending engagement with Microsoft, Palo Alto, Cato, Crowdstrike and Zcaler.
  3. High levels of engagement with educational content demonstrate that we are in the early stages of this shift. We saw this with SDN and NFV — in an early market our what is, how to, tips, and migration articles were the most engaged pieces on the site for these topics.
  4. Readers are searching for help.  Selecting a security platform vendor is only the first step. Without knowing how and where to buy these products or who can help them deploy, operate and manage these complicated technologies they can’t make progress securing their business.
Quantifying a shift

Our readership metrics show a shift away from best-in-class security products to platform-centric security, which reflects an overall market shift. They also show that the challenges in adopting this approach go beyond product and vendor selection and include deployment, operations and management to keep their business safe. While we see credible platform-centric stories from a few vendors, don’t discount broader networking, cloud and more focused security pure plays, as they will still play a role in securing your infrastructure.