I've lived and breathed cybersecurity sales for 27 years — and know how to get results in your world.

No one needs another generic sales trainer who sold copiers in the 90s. 

Here’s what sets me apart:

1. Built for Execution, Not Theory
I help you fix what’s slowing deals down right now. From tightening your sales motion to sharpening your messaging, my programs are designed to move the needle fast—not six months from now.

2. 100% Focused on Cybersecurity
I’ve spent over two decades selling and leading in cybersecurity. I speak the language of CISOs, understand how technical buyers think, and know how to help your reps win in competitive markets.

3. Repeatable Systems That Scale With You
This isn’t one-and-done training. I build programs your team can use again and again—from onboarding new reps to closing enterprise deals with confidence.

Cybersecurity sales leaders are given lofty revenue goals and need their teams to maximize every opportunity to exceed the goals. I help them do that. I transform their team from product sellers to positioners of business value. 

I've been in the cybersecurity sales world since 1998 and since January 2020, I have worked with numerous companies as their advisor, consultant, and trainer.

"Critical step in changing our business trajectory."   John Mayhall, CRO @ CyberGRX
"An extended member of the team."                            Denise Hayman, CRO @ Sonrai Security
"A new approach that got results."                               Dan Parelskin, VP Sales @ Axis Security
"Improved our effectiveness."                                      Amin Tavana, VP Enterprise Sales @ Bluescape
"An expert at communicating business value."           Tom Fusco, VP Sales @ McAfee / Checkpoint / Imperva
_______________________
Experienced sales and sales leadership trainer with a demonstrated history of working in the enterprise software industry. Skilled in sales enablement, sales training, sales effectiveness, sales coach, sales coaching, enterprise sales, channel sales, software industry, infosec market, cyber security, software as a service (SaaS), pre-sales, inside sales, and SDR / BDR. 
_______________________

Andrew Monaghan

I am busy creating the first and only platform for researching the cybersecurity industry. Seat holders  get access to all our data on 4,060+ cybersecurity vendors and 10,500 products. A platform for every security architect and CISO. 


Read my research at stiennon.substack.com (always free.)

Richard Stiennon

$740M for a category most security teams aren't monitoring yet.

CrowdStrike is acquiring SGNL - identity security for AI agents. 

Most security teams have zero visibility into what AI agents can access inside their infrastructure. No governance. No controls. No monitoring. 

CrowdStrike just put a price tag on that blind spot. 

Same pattern I've watched for 20 years: 

New tech → new attack surface → ignored → breach → category explodes → big player overpays. 

Every. Single. Time. 

SASE. Zero trust. CSPM. XDR. Now AI agent identity. 

The CISOs who spotted these categories early bought smart. Everyone else paid the acquisition premium. 

Right now there are vendors building AI agent security. In 3 years there will be 3-4, owned by CrowdStrike, Palo Alto, and Microsoft. 

The buying window is open. It won't be for long. 

I've been tracking cybersecurity vendors since 2005. That's why I built IT-Harvest - 3,000+ vendors, 400+ categories, updated daily. 

The next $740M category is forming right now.

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Main

We track 4,000+ cybersecurity vendors - funding, acquisitions, product positioning.

If you want to see how your current vendors stack up against alternatives, book a 30 minute walkthrough below:

https://calendly.com/it-harvest/30min

Chief Research Analyst

Advisory Board Member

Board Member

Member Of The Board Of Advisors

Advisor

On a mission to provide actionable insights and foster informed decision-making with complete data on the  cybersecurity industry.

French

On a mission to provide actionable insights and foster informed decision-making with complete data on the cybersecurity industry.

Palo Alto Networks acquiring CyberArk for $25 billion.

The largest acquisition in Palo Alto's history. One of the biggest
cybersecurity deals ever.

Here's what this actually means:

Identity is no longer a "nice to have." It's the foundation.

Palo Alto went from firewall company → platform company → identity
company.

Every major breach in 2024-2025 had one thing in common:
compromised credentials.

The old model: Protect the perimeter. The new model: Protect the
identity.

When the biggest security company on Earth pays $25B for identity,
that's not a trend.

That's a mandate.

PAM vendors, IGA vendors, CIEM vendors: your category just got a
new 800-pound gorilla.

There is no such thing as a cybersecurity platform.
And there never will be.

I've been hearing the "platform vs. best-of-breed" argument for 24
years. It's one of the oldest tropes large security vendors roll out.

The only ones buying it? Purchasing departments wanting to rationalize
their supplier base.

No CISO in the world is going to rip out Wiz or Orca because their
firewall vendor has a similar product on sale.

Here's why platform consolidation doesn't work in security:

You need the best possible defenses against a real and present danger.

If you compromise on security to reduce the burden on procurement,
you're going to be out of a job—and you might get indicted by the SEC.

Remember when Symantec and McAfee pitched this same fantasy over a
decade ago?

If you bought into their platform hype, you were left high and dry when
they stopped innovating and became acquisition targets themselves.

Enterprises are still reeling from standardizing on Windows NT 30
years ago. What could possibly induce them to make the same mistake
with their entire security stack?

You simply cannot purchase a single "platform" today that covers all the
cybersecurity layers you need.

Best-of-breed isn't a preference. It's a necessity.

cybersecurity #infosec #CISO
#enterprisesecurity

Why Gartner Only Covers 3% of Cybersecurity 

There are 4,000+ cybersecurity vendors in the market. 

Gartner Magic Quadrants typically cover 12-20 vendors per category. 

That's less than 3% of the market. 

This isn't a criticism of Gartner. Their model is built for depth, not breadth. They do intensive research on a curated set of vendors. It's valuable for what it is. 

But here's the gap: 

The most innovative solutions are often from vendors too small or too new to make it into analyst coverage. By the time they show up in a Magic Quadrant, they're already 4-8 years into the market. 

Early adopters who found them earlier got a competitive advantage. Everyone else paid more for a solution that was already becoming commoditized. 

If your vendor discovery process starts and ends with analyst reports, you're only seeing the tip of the iceberg. 

The question isn't whether Gartner is valuable. It's whether it's sufficient.

 For most security teams making buying decisions, it's not.

What I Learned From 20 Years of Cybersecurity M&A; 

I've advised on over $5B in cybersecurity exits.

Here's what I've learned about which vendors survive and which disappear: 

The vendors that get acquired and shut down usually have one thing in common: they built features, not platforms. They solved one problem really well, got bought for the technology, and got folded into something bigger. 

The vendors that become category leaders usually have something else in common: they saw where the market was going 2-3 years before everyone else and transformed it.

For security teams evaluating tools, this matters more than you think. 

Questions worth asking: 

→ Is this vendor building a platform or a feature?
 → Are they likely to get acquired? By who? What happens to the product then? → Is this category consolidating or expanding?
 → Where is the R&D; investment going? 

Most vendor evaluations focus on current capabilities. The best ones also model future scenarios. 

The tool you pick today needs to still make sense in 3 years.

The average enterprise security team has 75+ tools in their stack. And there are 4,000+ cybersecurity vendors fighting for their attention. 
New startups launching every week, acquisitions reshuffling the market, categories that didn't exist 18 months ago. 

Here's what that means for CISOs:
“The tool you’re evaluating likely has 10 alternatives you don’t know about”
“You don’t have time to shuffle through hundreds of pitches from vendors.”
“You have to rely on outdated reports and market maps”

Most security leaders solve this by relying on Gartner (who covers 3% of the market), vendor pitches (biased), or peer recommendations (anecdotal). 
None of these give you the full picture.
 The cybersecurity market moves too fast for annual reports. You need live intelligence. What's your current process for tracking vendors in categories you're evaluating?

Cyber stocks have been hit by a bomb cyclone this winter. 

All but Fortinet are down. 

Rapid7, Netskope, Zscaler, even Cloudflare all took 10+% hits. 

I imagine CyberArk is buoyed by a firm offer from Palo Alto Networks. Deal to close this summer.

Google Sheet here: https://lnkd.in/gu4cjAyt

Full disclosure: I don't hold any stocks.

Cybersecurity vendor pricing makes no sense until you understand the economics. 

Here's what their cost structure looks like: 

→ 45-50% of revenue goes to sales and marketing 
→ 25-30% goes to R&D
→ 20-25% goes to G&A
→ 25-30% goes to actually delivering the service 

Add it up. Over 100% of revenue in costs. 

That's why most VC-backed vendors operate at a loss chasing growth. 

This explains everything: 

Why vendors discount aggressively to land new logos - they need growth numbers more than profit. 

Why renewals come with price increases - they need to recover margin after discounting to win you. 

Why support degrades after you sign - investment flows to new customers, not existing ones. 

Why they push multi-year deals - they're locking in revenue before you realize the product doesn't deliver. 

When you understand this, you negotiate differently. 

You know the discount is available. You know the first-year price isn't the real price. You know their incentives shift the moment the contract is signed.
 
We track vendor financials and funding rounds at IT-Harvest because this context matters. 

Know who you're buying from.

Israel is a powerhouse in cybersecurity innovation.
There are 279 vendors headquartered there.
But if you look deeper, the number jumps to 323 companies born in Israel.

That's not a coincidence.
Israel isn't just a place where cybersecurity firms set up shop.
It's a breeding ground for new ideas, new startups, new solutions.

This ecosystem fuels global security advances.
It's a hub that pushes the entire industry forward.

Don't underestimate Israel's impact.
It's not just about the companies that exist.
It's about the innovation that keeps evolving there.

I spent 20 years as an industry analyst, including as VP of Research at Gartner.

One thing always frustrated me: security teams had no way to research the full cybersecurity market. They saw vendor pitches, analyst reports covering 3% of vendors, and whatever their peers happened to mention.

That's not research. That's guessing with extra steps. 

So I built IT-Harvest.

Our Dashboard is a research platform that tracks every cybersecurity vendor, product, and market movement. 

Not a subset. All of it.

What's in it:
→ 4,000+ vendors with product-level detail
→ Category mapping so you can see who actually competes with who 
→ M&A; and funding intelligence updated daily
→ Decision support for security teams evaluating tools

We've advised on $1B+ in cybersecurity exits. Security teams at large Pharma, Financial Services, and Private Equity use the platform. 

Don't forget the six editions of the Security Yearbook built on this data.

If you're a CISO, security architect, or anyone responsible for evaluating and selecting security products, this is the research layer that doesn't exist anywhere else.

I'll personally walk you through the platform. 30 minutes. No pitch deck, just the product. Grab a time on my Calendly: https://lnkd.in/gbbBqSfB

The Security Stack Overlap Problem 

Here's a pattern I see constantly in enterprise security: 

Team buys Tool A for endpoint protection. Different team buys Tool B for threat detection. Another team buys Tool C for incident response. 

Two years later, someone audits the stack and realizes: 

→ Tool A and Tool B have 60% feature overlap
 → Tool C was acquired and now offers the same capabilities as Tool A 
→ There's a Tool D that does all three for half the combined cost 

This happens because each team evaluated vendors in isolation. Nobody had visibility into what was already in the stack AND what was available in the market. 

The cost of this fragmentation is massive: 

→ Redundant licensing fees
 → Integration complexity
 → Gaps between tools that each team thought the other was covering 

The fix isn't better communication (though that helps). It's better tooling for understanding what you have vs. what exists. 

You can't optimize a stack you can't see.

On average it takes 45 tools to cover all of the NIST CSF subcategories. 

There are 4,000+ cybersecurity vendors with 11,400 products fighting for your attention. 

There are 280 new startups every year.

Here's what that means for CISOs:

“The tool you’re evaluating likely has 10+ alternatives you don’t know about”
“You don’t have time to shuffle through hundreds of pitches from vendors.”
“You have to rely on outdated reports and market maps”

Most security leaders solve this by relying on Gartner (who covers 3% of the market), vendor pitches (biased), or peer recommendations gathered at vendor sponsored dinners. 

None of these give you the full picture.

 The cybersecurity market moves too fast for annual reports. You need live intelligence. 

What's your current method for tracking vendors in categories you're evaluating?

The Hidden Cost of Picking Wrong 
I've watched security teams make the same expensive mistake for 20 years. 

They evaluate 3-4 vendors. Pick the one with the best demo. Sign a 3-year contract. 

18 months later they're ripping it out. 

Why? The vendor got acquired and product development stopped. A better solution emerged that they didn't know about. The "market leader" turned out to be the marketing leader. 

The cost isn't just the software. It's: 

→ 6-12 months of implementation time wasted
 → Integration work that has to be redone
 → Political capital spent justifying the original decision 
→ Security gaps while you transition 

The root cause is almost always the same: incomplete market intelligence at the time of decision. 

When you only see 5% of the options, you can't make the best choice. You can only make the best choice from what you saw. 

Due diligence isn't just about evaluating vendors. It's about knowing which vendors to evaluate in the first place.

Your board is going to ask you a question you can't answer. 

"How does our security stack compare to our peers?" 

You'll give a vague answer about best practices. Reference some Gartner report. Hope nobody pushes too hard. 

Because the truth is, you don't actually know. 

You know what you've deployed. You don't know what everyone else has deployed. 

Boards hate guessing.

Most cybersecurity vendors are flying blind.
They rely on patchy data, vendor reports, or gut feel.
That's a disaster.

A comprehensive data set changes everything.
It shows the entire industry landscape.
Tracks shifts, emerging threats, new players.

Without it, you're guessing.
Fighting blind against a fast-moving enemy.
Making decisions based on half the story.

If you want real insight, stop trusting limited data sources.
Build a complete view.
Understand the industry as a whole.

That's how you stay ahead.
That's how you make smarter decisions.

Vendors who ignore this risk falling behind fast.
The industry waits for no one.
Use data smartly or get left behind.

Your renewal quote just came in 40% higher.

The vendor knows you're locked in. They know switching costs are high. So they raise the price because they can.

This happens when you don't have leverage.

Leverage comes from knowing your options. When you can credibly say "we've evaluated alternatives and here's what they cost," the conversation changes.

IT-Harvest gives you renewal leverage:

→ Know the landscape
→ Know the pricing benchmarks

Don't get surprised. Get prepared.

Congrats to Tim Prendergast  and the StrongDM team on the acquisition by Delinea!

Father of CSPM, CEO of StrongDM (The Destroyer of Legacy PAMs), Prophet of Continuous ZT AuthZ.

StrongDM

Delinea

There are 137 hardware security modules from 68 vendors on the market. 

If you Google "HSM Market" you get a full page of scam market research reports. None have data on the products themselves. 

I have a simple proposal: The next time you initiate a search for a cybersecurity tool come to me. calendly.com/it-harvest 

I will walk you through ALL the options and help you get down to a short list. 

We have spent years gathering this data and Maximillian has built the only platform for making best use of cybersecurity product data.

Momentum Cyber's Cybersecurity Almanac is out!  https://lnkd.in/g9s-GZ9u

Note the overlap with Black Hat.  I will be traveling back and forth from the Aria to Mandalay Bay. :-)  Talking about AI Security in both venues.

We’re excited to welcome Richard Stiennon, Chief Research Analyst at IT-Harvest to the stage at Ai4 2026 on August 4-6 at The Venetian in Las Vegas!

Register to Attend: https://lnkd.in/gF4f-2ew
Apply to Speak: https://lnkd.in/gGxPjcmS

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