The Platform Squeeze Is Here

Welcome to this week’s edition of Cyber Motion, tailored for cybersecurity business leaders. In this newsletter, you’ll find practical strategies, cutting-edge insights, and fresh thinking designed to help your security-focused brand break through a crowded market. My goal is to equip you with the tools and ideas needed to thrive amid shifting threats, buyer skepticism, and evolving industry standards.

– Tobias

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Palo Alto Networks closed its $25 billion acquisition of CyberArk on February 11. Within days, hundreds of CyberArk employees were laid off. The message was clear: platform vendors aren't just buying capabilities—they're rapidly consolidating overlapping teams, eliminating redundancies, and locking customers into unified ecosystems.

This is the new reality of cybersecurity consolidation, and it has profound implications for mid-market companies generating $10M–$100M in ARR.

The platformization wave has arrived. Major vendors are bundling identity, cloud, and data security into unified platforms, and enterprise buyers are consolidating their vendor relationships. The pressure is on: companies that continue building point solutions without a clear acquisition thesis or platform partnership strategy risk becoming irrelevant as buyers choose integrated platforms over best-of-breed tools.

Cybersecurity M&A topped $70 billion across 420+ deals in 2025, with strategic buyers commanding 55% of total deal value. The pace hasn't slowed—January 2026 alone saw 34 deals announced, including moves by CrowdStrike, Infoblox, JumpCloud, LevelBlue, OneSpan, and Radware.

But it's not just volume. It's the strategic intent behind these acquisitions. Platform vendors are paying premium multiples for category adjacencies that complete their ecosystems. They're willing to move fast, integrate hard, and eliminate duplication to drive cost synergies and customer lock-in.

For mid-market cybersecurity executives, this creates a strategic fork in the road: build to sell, build to compete, or build to partner. The companies that fail to make this choice explicitly—and align their GTM, product roadmap, and capital strategy accordingly—will find themselves caught in the middle as buyers consolidate and acquirers become more selective.

If you're runing a mid-market cybersecurity company, here's what matters:

Platform vendors are your competitors and your potential acquirers. The same companies buying up category adjacencies are also competing with you for customer mindshare. Understanding which platforms need your capability—and whether they'd rather build, buy, or partner—is critical to your positioning strategy.

Buyers are consolidating vendor relationships. Enterprise security teams are tired of managing dozens of point solutions. They want fewer vendors, tighter integrations, and unified dashboards. If your value proposition assumes buyers will adopt best-of-breed tools indefinitely, you're fighting an uphill battle.

Your category positioning needs an answer to platformization. Can you credibly position as a platform play yourself? Do you have a differentiated integration story that makes you platform-adjacent? Or are you explicitly positioning for acquisition by a specific set of buyers? Without a clear answer, your narrative becomes defensive rather than strategic.

Capital strategy and GTM must align with your exit thesis. If you're building to sell, your roadmap should prioritize capabilities that fill gaps for likely acquirers. If you're building to compete, you need to articulate a durable moat that keeps platform vendors at bay. If you're building to partner, your GTM must prove that you make platforms more valuable, not redundant.

1. Map your acquisition landscape. Identify which platform vendors could credibly acquire you, what gaps you fill in their portfolios, and whether they have a history of building vs. buying. This isn't speculation—it's strategic planning. Your roadmap, partnerships, and narrative should reflect this map.

2. Pressure-test your differentiation against platform plays. Run a working session with your executive team: if a major platform vendor bundled a "good enough" version of your capability for free, would your customers still pay for your solution? If the answer is unclear, your differentiation needs sharpening.

3. Build optionality into your GTM motion. Partner channels, integration marketplaces, and ecosystem plays create optionality. They can position you as acquisition-ready or as a platform-adjacent player. Don't wait until M&A conversations start to build these relationships—by then, it's too late.

Stay sharp,
Tobias