Roundtables

Xolile Sibande, Auditor General of South Africa

Organisations are using an average of 83 separate security solutions from 29 vendors, according to IBM and Palo Alto Networks. As their report ‘Capturing the cybersecurity dividend’ says, there are certainly enough cyber tools and solutions, but most are failing to fully deliver on their promise

This has led most cyber vendors to develop platforms, that, in the Gartner definition, convert products, services or operations into a centralised, often cloud-based platform to foster an ecosystem. Palo Alto decided in 2024 to go all in on this “platformisation” strategy, and has spent billions on acquisitions since then. It also agreed to pay $25bn for CyberArk last year, and the deal is expected to close in the next couple of months. This will bring it CyberArk’s expertise in the privileged access management area.