BT Security conducted its “largest-ever” security supplier appraisal, and a review of the entire security vendor ecosystem to determine which partners it will work with to provide managed security services. And McAfee, Palo Alto Networks, and Fortinet came out on top.

The network operator selected these three vendors as its “critical partners” to supply product and services that BT will use in its global portfolio. McAfee, Palo Alto Networks, and Fortinet will also support BT’s commercial and operational activities, and they will co-develop a security roadmap to meet BT’s customers’ needs.

BT says it decided to refine its security partners because its customers had a difficult time navigating the huge number of vendors and products, many with overlapping systems that don’t necessarily interoperate, and this made customers’ security environments difficult and costly to manage.

So, in a move to reduce complexity for its customers, BT conducted a review to select the best partners for specific security requirements.

In addition to the three “critical security” partners, BT named Microsoft, IBM, and Cisco as its second-tier “strategic partners,” and it named nine additional “ecosystem partners.” The nine are Skybox, Forescout, Zscaler, Check Point, CrowdStrike, Okta, Qualys, Netscout, and F5.

BT’s vendor choices roughly line up with the market leaders by revenue. According to Analysys Mason’s cybersecurity vendors’ revenue tracker, Palo Alto Networks tops the network security vendor market with $869 million for the first-quarter of 2020. Cisco’s network security revenue reached $776 million, and Fortinet took the No. 3 spot with about $577 million in network security revenue during Q1.