Dedale Intelligence's take on Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity: Navigating Fragmentation, Platformization, and the AI arms race

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Cybersecurity is often seen as one of the most complex technology markets. How do you structure it?

Pablo Rodrigo: Cybersecurity is fundamentally a race between attackers and defenders. As attack strategies become more sophisticated, organizations continuously adapt their security stacks. To analyze this space, we rely on two complementary dimensions.

The first one is the cybersecurity function, which follows a fairly consistent lifecycle:

• Identify and govern critical assets, data, and access rights
• Protect those assets through preventive controls
• Detect abnormal behavior and attacks in real time
• Respond and recover when incidents occur

This lifecycle view helps clarify where each cybersecurity solution actually fits and delivers value.

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What is the second dimension you use to analyze the market?

Pablo Rodrigo: The second lens is the type of asset being protected, which has expanded significantly over time. Cybersecurity used to focus mainly on endpoints and networks, but today the scope is much broader.

We now look at assets such as:

• Endpoints and networks
• Cloud environments and applications
• Identities and data
• Operational technology and cyber-physical systems
• And increasingly, AI systems themselves

Human behavior is also a security domain in its own right, given the continued prevalence of social engineering and insider risk.

Every new digital asset increases the attack surface and creates new security needs.

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How does this framework translate into concrete market segments?

Pablo Rodrigo: Combining these two dimensions allows us to identify more than 100 cybersecurity niches. Some of the core building blocks include exposure and vulnerability management, endpoint and network security, identity and access management, data protection, cloud security, and detection and response platforms.

More recently, AI security has emerged as a distinct segment, addressing risks related to AI models, training data, and inference pipelines. At the same time, SecOps solutions, such as SIEM, XDR, and SOAR,continue to play a central role across asset types.

Cybersecurity is not a single market, but a dense ecosystem of highly specialized segments.

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Where do cybersecurity services fit into this ecosystem?

Pablo Rodrigo: Services sit on top of the software stack and are becoming increasingly strategic. While advisory, integration, and testing remain important, the most attractive segment today is managed security services.

Managed offerings, whether for identity, network security,detection and response, or backup and recovery, provide recurring revenue and operational leverage. For many smaller software vendors, MSSPs have become acritical channel to scale and remain relevant alongside large platform players.

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Based on your interviews, what are the key dynamics shaping the market today?

Pablo Rodrigo: Several dynamics coexist and sometimes conflict with each other:

• A push toward vendor consolidation, alongside a reluctance to rely on a single provider (e.g., Palo Alto acquiring CyberArk)
• The expansion of the attack surface through new asset types such as OT and AI
• Growing importance of data sovereignty, particularly in Europe
• The central role of MSSPs in enterprise security strategies
• And the accelerating impact of AI, on both attack and defense capabilities

AI is intensifying the arms race, enabling more sophisticated attacks while also augmenting defenders.

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How does this translate into the current vendor landscape?

Pablo Rodrigo: Despite active M&A and platform strategies, the market remains structurally fragmented. Large vendors are expanding horizontally, but specialized players continue to dominate specific niches, whether in identity, data security, exposure management, OT security,or SecOps.

This fragmentation reflects the diversity of environments and risks organizations need to secure, rather than a lack of maturity.

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From an investment perspective, what stands out today?

Pablo Rodrigo: Cybersecurity remains one of the most attractive software markets. There are still many niches with strong growth potential, new segments like AI security are emerging, and others are being reshaped, for example, the shift from traditional firewalls to zero-trustarchitectures.

AI is unlikely to commoditize cybersecurity vendors, but adopting it is now essential to remain competitive. Finally, large vendors remain highly acquisitive, creating multiple potential strategic exit opportunities.

Cybersecurity combines structural demand, constant innovation, and strong M&A dynamics, which is rare at this scale.

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This interview is part of Dedale Intelligence’s ongoing series of expert insights, bringing research-driven perspectives on the most dynamic segments in software and technology. For more in-depth analysis, explore our latest articles, or contact us.