Baird’s Cybersecurity Investment Banking team recently attended the Black Hat USA 2024 conference and Las Vegas was buzzing with cyber. With an upcoming US election, multiple wars and a market dip setting the backdrop for the event, there were no shortages of reasons for cyber companies to be coming off hot Q2 performances.
The general security market is still experiencing the same strength that we observed at RSA in May 2024 and seems to be tracking towards more consolidation. Themes that companies and investors are looking to explore include the following:
Focus on the “Platform Play.” Cybersecurity vendors continue to focus on consolidating security solutions as customers are driven to “cyber platforms”. Palo Alto’s most recent transaction with IBM’s QRadar further reinforces this trend.
Email Is a Critical Threat Vector. Despite the maturity of the email security market, innovation and transaction activity continue to thrive. Mimecast has executed two transactions in as many weeks, Code42 and Aware. This is on the back of KnowBe4’s acquisition of Egress and Abnormal’s $250mm capital raise.
Know Your Network. Enterprises are being held accountable for what is happening in their perimeter and across their third parties. Understanding not just devices, but shadow IT assets, cloud services and third-party integrations are all key to maintaining cyber resilience.
Impact of the CrowdStrike Incident.One of the most discussed topics at Black Hat. While not a technical security breach, this has focused customers on the importance of adding resiliency and redundancy to their security architectures.
Emergence of Standards. As the cyber market continues to mature, the emergence of standards is establishing a consistent framework and best practices to managing and mitigating risks. Some of the most important frameworks include MITRE ATT&CK Framework, NIST, CMMC, GDPR, CTI CMMC to name a few.
Continual proliferation of new and innovative attack vectors.AI-powered attacks and deepfakes are on the rise and create new challenges for enterprises and security vendors. WhatsApp was discussed by several vendors due to attacks becoming more sophisticated on the platform.
Baird’s Cybersecurity team has extensive experience advising across the sector. Our sector expertise covers network and endpoint security, security operations, identity and access management, security awareness training, threat intelligence, data security, application security and managed security services. We welcome the opportunity to discuss these topics and how they may impact your business or future strategy.
