TCP #78: The Future of Security🔮
🌶️ What's hot in security | Mar. 5th - Mar. 12th, 2025
Welcome to The Cybersecurity Pulse (TCP)! I'm Darwin Salazar, Head of Product Strategy and Marketing at Monad and former detection engineer in big tech. Each week, I dig through all the major headlines to bring you the latest security product innovation and industry news. Subscribe below for weekly updates! 📧
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What’s up y’all!👋🏽
If you’re in the US, Happy Spring Forward week. Not sure why changing the clock 2x a year is still a thing. Pretty terrible idea if you ask me. Below is how I feel about the whole situation:
Anyways, lots to cover. Few highlights below:
📈 ZScaler ( ZS 0.00%↑ ) blow out earnings.
🌶️ More Cybereason drama + $120M in funding
🎯’s presentation to 36 startup founders @ AWS x NVIDIA x CrowdStrike startup accelerator
🔨 Sola Security emerges from stealth ($30M in funding). Retool, but for security?
📰Tons more industry + product news
Also, if you’re reading from the Substack site, you may have noticed that we’ve switched to light mode (sorry dark mode fam😅) . Few more changes coming to TCP over the coming months 🤫.
Have feedback? Feel free to drop a comment or DM me!
All that said, let’s cyber 🕺🏽
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🌶️ Cybereason CEO leaves after months of boardroom blowups
Cybereason recently raised $120M in funding amidst heavy drama at the board level which resulted in 2 board members + their CEO, Eric Gan, departing. Seems like it was a shaky bout and I can't imagine how things are within the 4 walls at Cybereason. Will be interesting to continue to see how things shake out for them. Imo, this is PE (or VC via Vision Fund? Idk) takeover of security biz gone wrong.
Few excerpts from The Register's coverage on the story below:
"According to a lawsuit [PDF] filed by Gan in Delaware last month against Cybereason, Softbank, Liberty Strategic Capital, and others, he put several funding proposals to Cybereason's board of directors, and warned that without more money the biz could be forced into bankruptcy.
"Gan’s filing alleges the board knocked back 13 financing proposals between July 2024 and February 2025" 🤯
Zscaler beat all Wall St. analyst expectations in Q2 FY25, solidifying its position as the 'Zero Trust' leader. Details below:
$648M in revenue, up 23% YoY, exceeding the high end of their guidance and beating expectations.
Subscription revenue (up 23% to over $2.7B in ARR) drove growth, with professional services remaining stable.
Free cash flow margin hit a Q2 record of 22%. Operational efficiency at its finest.
Over 8,000 customers (!), with 620 surpassing $1M in ARR.
Safe to say that Zscaler is hitting its stride. While I don't consider them to be as flashy or in the news as much as SentinelOne, PANW, or CRWD, they do execute extremely well. Valued at $31B. Their GTM playbook is to be studied, in my opinion.
Testing new substack features so adding their financial chart below just because 🤷🏽♂️
🎙️ Jeetu Patel: Cisco’s AI-powered cybersecurity future [Podcast]
Almost halfway through on this one. What’s stood out to me most so far is:
Cisco is enabling customers to apply security at any layer of the stack. Kernel, cloud, network, you name it. The Splunk acquisition + their existing lead on network telemetry position them to be very deadly in the long run as they double down AI which is hugely reliant on volume, diversity, and quality of data.
Jeetu was formerly CPO @ Box so understands building product at massive scale.
Cisco was valued ~$250B at the time of recording. IIRC, Jeetu said their security biz (incl. services) does ~$8-10B a year making it one of the largest security companies in the world.
While Splunk is top of most people's mind when it comes to Cisco security, it's key to remember they also have 20+ security products and if they embrace AI + platformization as their moat, they may be mentioned with the PANWs and CRWDs as favorites of security teams. They certainly do have their work cut out for them though (i.e., restructuring Splunk pricing, unified CNAPP UX, solid EDR etc.). Will be fun to see what Cisco cooks up over the next 5+ years. Also will be fun to finish the podcast.. Jeetu is a wizard.
Huge shoutout to the Inside The Network crew for continuously bringing on titans of the industry to give us unparalleled insights.
🎯 Ross's presentation at the CRWD x NVIDIA x AWS Startup accelerator
AWS, CrowdStrike, and NVIDIA recently hosted an in-person kickoff for their cybersecurity startup accelerator which includes 36 startups. Our friend, Ross Haleliuk from , delivered a presentation titled "Navigating the Cybersecurity Industry: Founder's Guide" and man, it's loaded with gems.
It's a masterclass for startups looking to win the trust + business of security leaders. He also dives into many of the variables and dynamics that are shaping today's market (i.e., platformization, consolidation, compliance)
HIGHLY (!!) recommend reading through the deck if you're in any sort of GTM function in security.
Key Takeaways from the 2025 State of AI in the Cloud Report
Wiz recently sampled data from across thousands of public cloud accounts and found some pretty revealing stats. What stuck out to me most is that most companies are choosing to self-host foundational models as opposed to using managed cloud AI services. Self-hosting is more cost-efficient in the long run + provides more peace of mind on security/compliance fronts. Probably some efficiency gains on performance and reliability as well.
Great report. Check it out here.
🔮 The Future of Security
“Product news” → “For Builders” → “The Future of Security”. That’s been the evolution of this section over the past 3 weeks. I think it has a nice ring to it + it encapsulates what we typically cover in this section:
New products
New startups
New partnerships
Mergers & Acquisitions
Funding News
That said, I think “The Future of Security” is here to stay. If you hate it, let me know and I’ll write a poem about it. Now.. onto the news!
Application Security
Ghost has launched ReaperBot, an open-source tool aimed at teaching the ins and outs of agentic AI in AppSec. Designed to be paired with Ghostbank as a learning sandbox to explore agents, subagents, agent hand-offs, tool calling, and prompting through a multi-step use case.
This reference architecture comes with all the essentials to get started quickly and is easily extensible, allowing users to integrate additional tools for broader security workflows. Whether you’re new to AI-driven security or looking to sharpen your skills, ReaperBot offers a hands-on way to master agentic AppSec.
Dive into the project on their GitHub.
More AppSec news ⬇️
Detectify launches Alfred to automate CVE security testing with AI
CrowdStrike Falcon Cloud Security Introduces Application Context to Runtime Detections
Cyber Insurance
Coalition Raises $30M from Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance
Coalition is a leading cyber insurance company which recently raised $30M from a Japanese insurance leader. I'd imagine this is the beginning of a long-term partnership as Coalition grows it global footprint. Definitely a great indicator of Coalition's continued success in the insurance space.
Data Security
Seems like enterprise adoption of agentic AI has been soaring and rightly so, the ROI is immense. That said, security teams must still do their jobs and agentic AI introduces new challenges. Varonis recently rolled out new capabilities to secure Salesforce (parent co. for Slack, Tableau et. al.) agentic AI layer by inventorying all agents, their permissions, and monitoring their activity.
This is a great example of an incumbent market leader not resting on their laurels and continuing to tackle emerging challenges for customers. I feel like this isn't always the case which is why we see some big names fail over time. Kudos to Varonis!
Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC)
AuditBoard brings AI to Compliance
Few new cool features for their GRC audit and risk management tool.
More GRC news ⬇️
Identity Security
SpecterOps raises $75M to expand identity attack path security platform
SpecterOps, creator of BloodHound, has raised a $75M Series B round. I don't think there's another company that comes close to them in understanding the intricate world of Microsoft Identity. That includes traditional Active Directory + Entra ID which gets very messy, very fast with scale. Kudos to SpecterOps, would love to see them dig into AWS + GCP identities more. Maybe that's what the funding for? 🤷🏽♂️
IoT/OT Security
Armis acquires Otorio for $120M
The acquisition will help Armis expand its dominance by merging Otorio's on-prem exposure management capabilities into their Centrix platform.
👀 New Category
Sola Security emerges from stealth with $30M in funding
Sola didn't fit squarely into any of the domains I typically cover so I created a 'new category' for them. They're no-code/low-code security app builder. Think of it as Retool for cybersecurity. You can check out their App Gallery here. They cover many key use cases around AppSec, CloudSec, and IAM.
The way it works, from what I gathered in this video is that they provide access to key security data sources, ingest into Sola, provide OOTB queries for them, have many canned visualizations, filtering and custom dashboarding. Workflows similar to Tines. AI chatbot. And boom, you have a security app. This is certainly an interesting and fresh approach to security.
Not sure how much traction this gains out of the gate. I doubt that a custom-built security app replaces best of breed solutions (i.e., Wiz as a CNAPP, CrowdStrike for EDR, Cato for SASE, SIEMs etc.). Maybe this will be a great added layer for easier management of those solutions? Also, how many security teams do you know that would like to build + maintain their own solutions? I don't know many. Maybe that's about to change with emergence + exponential advancements in AI.
Anyways, their leadership team is STACKED and proven (Fmr. Cider Security founders). $30M in the bank from great investors (i.e., Michael Moritz, S Capital, and Glilot). Great branding + story. Will be fun to watch them build + grow. Nobody ever said category creation is easy.
Security Operations
Crogl emerges from stealth with $30M
Out of all AI for SecOps solutions, this one of the few I'm excited about. Why? The founding team. Monzy Merza has held IC + leadership positions at Splunk, Databricks, HSBC, and Sandia's atomic research lab. Their CTO, David Dorsey, has also led content + security research at Splunk for 6+ years. This is a poised and experienced pair. Will be fun to watch how they attack the space.
I also thought the meaning for Crogl is pretty cool:
"“Crogl” is a portmanteau of three words and ideas: Cronus, the leader of the titans and the god of time, accounts for the first three letters of the name; the ‘g’ comes from gnosis, which means knowledge or awareness; and the ‘l’ at the end stands for logic. In a sense, the name encapsulates what the startup is setting out to do. " - Ingrid Lunden, TechCrunch
More SecOps news ⬇️
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Bye For Now!
That’s all for this week… ¡Nos vemos la próxima semana! 👋🏽
Disclaimer
The insights, opinions, and analyses shared in The Cybersecurity Pulse are my own and do not represent the views or positions of my employer or any affiliated organizations. This newsletter is for informational purposes only and should not be construed as financial, legal, or investment advice.
The blogpost highlights turmoil at Cybereason and contrasts it with Zscaler's success and Cisco’s strategy. It’s worth asking what criteria Cybereason’s board used to reject numerous funding proposals. Also, comparing Zscaler's focus on operational efficiency with Cisco’s AI-driven expansion could provide insights into different strategies for growth in cybersecurity. Perhaps looking into reports from Gartner or Forrester might offer deeper understanding of these strategies and market dynamics.