Security Technology Sector Overview – Q3 2018

The security technology sector has seen a lot of funding momentum in recent years. This blog post examines the different components of the security tech sector and how they make up this startup ecosystem. We will illustrate what the categories of innovation are and which categories have the most companies. We will also compare the categories in terms of their funding and maturity.

Threat Detection and Mitigation Is the Largest Security Technology Category

Let’s start off by looking at the Sector Map. We have classified 1155 security technology startups into 14 categories that have raised $30 billion. The Sector Map highlights the number of companies in each category. It also shows a random sampling of companies in each category.

Security Technology Sector Map

We see that Threat Detection and Mitigation is the largest category with 285 companies. These companies monitor networks to detect and mitigate cyber attacks. Some example companies in this category include Darktrace, Cylance, Vectra, and Menlo Security.

Let’s look at our Innovation Quadrant to find out the funding and maturity of these categories in relation to one another.

The Pioneers Quadrant Has the Most Security Technology Categories

Our Innovation Quadrant divides the security technology categories into four different quadrants.

Security Technology Innovation Quadrant

We see that the Pioneers quadrant has the most security technology categories with 7. These categories are in the earlier stages of funding and maturity. The Established quadrant has 3 categories that have reached maturity with less financing. The Heavyweights quadrant also contains 3 categories. These categories have reached maturity with significant financings. The Disruptors quadrant has Cloud Security as its one category, which has acquired significant financing at a young age.

We’ve analyzed the security technology categories and their relative stages of innovation. Let’s now look at how they stack up against one another in terms of their total funding versus company counts.

Threat Detection and Mitigation Startups Have the Most Funding

The graph below shows the total amount of venture funding and company count in each category.

Security Technology Total Category Funding

As the above graphic implies, the Threat Detection and Mitigation category leads in total funding with $10.5 billion. Its funding is almost 1.6 times the funding of the next category, Data Security with $6.6 billion.

Conclusion: The Threat Detection and Mitigation Category Leads Security Technology

The analysis above highlights that the Threat Detection category currently leads the sector in both total companies and total funding as well. We’ll see if any other categories will catch up and take the lead during the rest of 2018.

To learn more about our complete security technology report and research platform, visit us at www.venturescanner.com or contact us at [email protected].