The Canalys Cybersecurity Leadership Matrix 2022 – highlights

The latest Canalys Cybersecurity Leadership Matrix has been published, revealing that eight vendors have been rated as Cybersecurity Channel Champions in 2022: Check Point, ESET, Fortinet, Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks, Sophos, Trend Micro and WatchGuard. These vendors achieved high scores in the Candefero Vendor Benchmark and increased their importance to partners’ businesses. They showed continued improvement in channel management, strategy and execution over the last 12 months, as well as a commitment to making future improvements.

Current heightened threat levels, increased exposure to vulnerabilities and past chronic underinvestment have created a complex and challenging environment. But this has also created opportunities for cybersecurity partners to work more closely with customers. Those adopting a consultative-led sales approach, demonstrating expertise on products and services to address the latest threats, extending beyond protection to detection and response, and simplifying operations via managed services will be better placed to succeed. Vendors that optimize partner programs to enable their channel partners to specialize, build capabilities and excel in these areas will be at an advantage in a fragmented but highly competitive sector.

Congratulations this year go to Check Point, ESET, Fortinet, Juniper Networks, Palo Alto Networks, Sophos and Trend Micro for retaining their status as Cybersecurity Channel Champions. They were joined by WatchGuard for the first time. These vendors have made a broad range of channel investments during the review period to optimize their partner programs. There were many successful initiatives, but some stood out:

• Enhancing the partner program experience from registration to progression to higher program tiers.
• Automating processes to improve agility and ease of doing business for partners.
• Simplifying the development of partners’ cybersecurity managed services with multiple SOC options to advance detection and response capabilities.
• Increasing partner profitability and sales of new technologies through targeted rebates and incentives.
• Accelerating the transition to subscriptions and different consumption-based models.
• Increasing cross-sell and upsell opportunities through improved analytics and partner collaboration.
• Developing new routes to market and improving transactions via multiple cloud marketplaces.
• Advancing partners’ cybersecurity skills and capabilities through specializations and accreditations, including professional services.

The evolving threat landscape means cybersecurity vendors cannot sit still. Indeed, the current ransomware crisis is far from over. Continuous investment in products and services, as well as programs to engage and enable partners is more important than ever just to keep pace with threat actors. This will require closer relationships between vendors and their partners. Even the Champions cannot celebrate their success for too long!

2021 Canalys Cybersecurity Leadership Matrix