When I started building Sysdig, I knew there was a big unmet need in cloud security — but I didn’t realize that need was $23,000,000,000 big…
I’m as competitive as the next founder, but I want to take this opportunity to tip my cap to Wiz. It took great courage and conviction to turn down an offer of $23B to continue competing as an independent player. I think they made the right decision. Let me tell you why.
The potential Alphabet deal was a clear signal that cloud security is well on its way to being the biggest segment of cybersecurity, on pace to surpass EDR solutions and NextGen Firewalls. For context, led by CrowdStrike, EDR solutions have a roughly combined $100B market cap; NextGen Firewalls, led by Palo Alto Networks, have a $100B market cap segment as well.
Cloud security is on track to overtake both. Why? Because cloud security is the next key frontier in cybersecurity. We’re still in the early stages of an incredibly exciting market and it’s healthy to have independent innovators like Wiz and Sysdig challenging the status quo established by legacy solutions.
And we are still well within the early days of cloud, which means we’re still in the early days of cloud security adoption. The first phase has focused on security hygiene and compliance, and the second will be concerned with real-time protection against unknown threats and malicious attacks.
It is clear we have two cloud-native leaders taking a multi-cloud approach. Sysdig’s key strength and differentiator in cloud security today is real-time cloud detection and response. Wiz is undoubtedly a key player in hygiene and compliance — they hit the check box for the first phase of cloud security —but CISOs know that prevention, inevitably, is not enough. They need real-time protection against unknown threats and malicious attacks, and that's where Sysdig shines.
TL;DR: $100B in scale for the cloud security market is not only possible, it’s almost certain.
