VMware increased its security customers 50% year over year and now counts almost 30,000 security customers globally, Patrick Morley, SVP and GM of VMware’s Security Business Unit, said during a keynote address at today’s VMware Security Connect event.

“VMware wants to be seen in the industry as a security leader, and I’m very proud of the progress that we’ve made over the last 18 months as part of VMware, and in particular, over the last 12 months since we all got together virtually,” Morley said.

Morley’s the former CEO of Carbon Black, which VMware bought for $2.1 billion 18 months ago. And 12 months ago, VMware hosted its first Carbon Black Connect virtual event, which it renamed Security Connect this year.

Since acquiring Carbon Black, VMware has scooped up several other security companies to round out its portfolio. These include network detection and response firm Lastline and Avi Networks that, among other things, brought in a load balancer and web application firewall.

On the cloud-native and application security side, VMware bought Kubernetes security startup Octarine last year and, more recently, API security vendor Mesh7.

“Octarine is now fully integrated on the Carbon Black Cloud platform, and we’ve also introduced our XDR strategy,” Morley said.

In a press conference yesterday, Tom Gillis, SVP and GM of VMware's Network and Security Business Unit, described extended detection and response (XDR) as VMware’s “next frontier.”

“Over the past 12 months alone, we’ve released over 100 major features on our product platforms,” Morley continued. “And on the engineering side, since we’ve been part of VMware, we’ve more than doubled the number of engineers. Again, recognition that we’re investing aggressively in our security strategy here at VMware.”

VMware has, for the past year and a half, said its security business topped $1 billion and today Morley repeated that $1 billion revenue figure. While this is the same figure that VMware security executives have shared on multiple occasions, most recently on the company’s fourth quarter of fiscal 2020 earnings call, VMware’s security customer count has increased since then. On the Q4 call, then-COO Sanjay Poonen said the security business has more than 25,000 customers.

However, VMware still has a ways to go before it catches up with Palo Alto Networks and Cisco.

For comparison: Palo Alto Networks, which, according to Analysys Mason, in 2020 overtook Cisco as the largest network security vendor by revenue, grew its revenue to $3.8 billion in 2020, representing year-on-year growth of 21%.

In fact, Palo Alto Networks’ quarterly revenue alone topped $1 billion in its most recent earnings period. The security vendor’s revenue for the fiscal third quarter of 2021 grew 24% year over year to $1.1 billion.

In an email, a Palo Alto Networks spokesperson said the vendor has more than 82,000 customers in more than 150 countries across multiple industries. This includes 95% of the Fortune 100, and more than 71% of the Global 2000.

Cisco, meanwhile, says its security product revenue is $3.5 billion, and this amount does not include services. It counts more than 250,000 customers and protects 100% of the Fortune 100, according to a spokesperson.

In its most recent earnings period, Cisco reported its security business grew 13% year over year.