Finance & Banking , Fraud Management & Cybercrime , Fraud Risk Management
Are Pure-Play Threat Intel Vendors a Vanishing Breed?
Forrester Analyst on Mastercard's Recorded Future Buy, the Need for Specialization
Even though threat intelligence heavyweights Recorded Future and Mandiant have been acquired by larger companies, pure-play threat intel firms still have a future in the marketplace, but they need to offer specialized intelligence capabilities that cyber defense teams can't find elsewhere, said Forrester analyst Brian Wrozek.
See Also: 2024 CISO Insights: Navigating the Cybersecurity Maelstrom
Mastercard’s acquisition of Recorded Future last week for $2.65 billion is part of a larger trend of financial institutions acquiring cybersecurity firms to gain more control over their security operations, Wrozek said. Mastercard has for years acquired cybersecurity companies to safeguard the entire financial transaction chain, and It's possible that Recorded Future will prioritize fraud-related intelligence given Mastercard's financial services focus (see: How Mastercard Benefits From the $2.65B Recorded Future Deal).
Major players such as CrowdStrike have paired threat intelligence with endpoint telemetry, and Google and Mandiant have incorporate incident response intelligence to take advantage of "natural synergies," Wrozek said, but pure-play firms can offer specialized capabilities to meet market demands.
"There will always be room for the pure-play players, but what you will see over time is them start to become much more niche about their specific skillsets, whether that's excelling at things like dark web intelligence or focusing on things like fraud, rogue credentials or rogue domains."
In this video interview with Information Security Media Group, Wrozek also discussed:
- How the Recorded Future buy fits Mastercard's history of cyber investment;
- How the purchase will affect Recorded Future's neutrality and offerings, such as brand protection and vulnerability intelligence;
- Implications for other pure-play threat intelligence firms.
Wrozek helps organizations secure their OT environments in industries such as critical infrastructure and manufacturing and guides clients on how to turn threat information into actionable threat intelligence for better decision-making. Prior to joining Forrester in 2022, Wrozek led enterprise cybersecurity, physical security and privacy teams at companies such as Texas Instruments, Alliance Data and Optiv.
