Trend Micro positioned to take on enterprise security leaders

Integrated security products and end-to-end coverage puts Trend Micro in the right technology discussions. Now the company must work toward market visibility and CISO affinity.

Enterprise security trends

ESG research points to a few growing trends in the enterprise security market:

• 24% of enterprise organizations are actively consolidating the number of cybersecurity vendors they do business with, while 38% are doing so on a limited basis. Think of the 24% as leading-edge customers with the rest of the market emulating this behavior over the next few years.
• 62% of organizations say CISOs are getting more involved with cybersecurity procurement and vendor management as a function of security technology consolidation. In other words, CISOs demand a say in choosing and managing vendor partners they plan on throwing more money at in the future.
• 82% of cybersecurity professionals strongly agree or agree with the statement: “My organization is actively building a security architecture that integrates multiple individual products.” This is a force multiplier effect where multiple controls and detection engines support each other.

Given these trends, many security technology vendors are integrating point products, filling product gaps through acquisitions, investing in their distribution channels, and cozying up to CISOs to grab a bigger piece of the enterprise security market pie.

Which vendors are well-positioned for this transition? According to ESG research, cybersecurity professionals think of Cisco, IBM, Symantec and McAfee as frontrunners. While those four vendors enjoy a lead position, market momentum for vendor consolidation, product integration, and an enterprise security portfolio is in its early stages, and vendor rankings could change at any time.

Trend Micro well-positioned for enterprise security market

Who else could crack the top ranks? Trend Micro is one vendor that comes to mind. I spent the end of last week at Trend Micro’s annual Insights event in Boston and came away with a positive impression of the company’s progress. I believe Trend is well-positioned for large enterprise deals for several reasons including:

• End-to-end coverage. Trend Micro has security products for endpoints, networks, and cloud workloads. These products used to stand alone, but Trend Micro is making good progress toward integrating the whole enchilada. This gives Trend Micro the opportunity to compete well in a single-product area and then play the old “land and expand” card over time. It’s worth noting that all enterprise security vendors will have to proceed in this way.
• Strong threat detection assets. If you want to detect threats quickly and accurately, you need to be able to correlate endpoint behavior, network traffic, malicious file activities, and threat intelligence. Trend has all these bases covered.
• A partner ecosystem. Trend Micro deserves credit for being a first mover on server virtualization security with VMware and cloud security with Amazon. Trend Micro has added to this motion by hitching its wagon to Microsoft Azure, as well.
• An eye toward the future. Trend is investing heavily in areas such as container security, Internet of Things (IoT) security, GDPR compliance, etc. This should help it crack new deals in the next 12 to 18 months.
• Investments in growing markets. Most people equate Trend Micro with Asian markets – the company has enjoyed lots of success in Japan. Still, Trend Micro has made progress in Europe and the Americas over the past few years, increasing its enterprise market share in the process. The company is investing in sales, field engineering and marketing in these areas, as well as other high-growth regions, such as the Middle East and Africa.

From a product and strategy perspective, Trend Micro is well positioned to join the enterprise security club, but there is work ahead to achieve this goal. Trend Micro will win its share of deals if it can get involved in more RFI/RFPs. It needs to adopt aggressive, startup-like market messages to elevate its position on the CISO shortlist so it doesn’t miss out on field-level action. And like other security technology vendors, it must establish more affinity with CISOs who care about supporting business missions and objectives, not just cybersecurity bits and bytes.

The enterprise cybersecurity market is transitioning from a sea of point products to tightly coupled, end-to-end security architectures. Trend Micro’s biggest problem is that many CISOs don’t know that it can address these changing requirements. If the company can change this perception, it should find a seat for itself at the lucrative enterprise security vendor table.