The market's new center of gravity
According to a report by ETNews, the cybersecurity sector is shifting its competitive axis from threat analysis and detection to the ability to block attacks and respond automatically. The impetus comes from the offensive use of artificial intelligence, which according to the outlet accelerates both the identification of vulnerabilities and the construction of attacks. The result, again according to the source, is that models based on manual analysis and periodic application of patches are showing growing limitations.
These assessments come from three companies that commented on their recent results: Fortinet, Tenable and F5. This is therefore not an independent market survey, but the interpretation that the vendors themselves give of a change in customer demands.
Integrated platforms and automation
Fortinet argues that demand is shifting toward platforms capable of combining multiple security functions and reducing response times, rather than toward separate products. Chief Financial Officer Cristiane Olgardt links this trend to a change in perception: with faster and more sophisticated attacks, security becomes a risk management issue discussed at the corporate leadership level, and customers seek comprehensive visibility and automated response.
Tenable, for its part, describes a speed gap: according to co-CEO Steve Vintz, AI changes the attack surface faster than most organizations can react, and this is not a temporary phenomenon but a structural change. The company says it has extended automation from vulnerability detection to the execution and verification of remediation through AI agents, and claims that customers using it resolve two to three times as many critical exposures as comparable customers.
The time factor and the demand for investment
F5 identifies the problem in the time window between attack and defense. CEO François Locoh-Donou observes that AI accelerates the discovery of flaws at machine speed, reducing the margin for intervention, and that the 43-day remediation cycle is now a risk factor. The company reports that, in an internal test conducted after the disclosure of a PHP vulnerability, its AI-based web application firewall blocked several attack variants without specially created blocking rules.
On the investment front, Fortinet expects an expansion in security spending and compares it, in terms of dynamics, to the increase in infrastructure tied to remote work during the pandemic, though it estimates it will be broader and longer lasting. F5 reports more than 300 customers for the application firewall launched in March, while Tenable speaks of additional budgets allocated to exposure management and not just detection.
The actual scale of these investments, price trends, and the durability over time of the claimed performance remain to be verified: the available information is mainly corporate and self-referential.
