The CF List: 2022's 20 Zero Trust Security Providers You Should Know

Cybersecurity providers have been busy this year. More organizations have adopted zero trust security, including zero trust network access (ZTNA), with the continuing onslaught of cyberattacks against companies of all sizes.

Zero-trust security remains a hot topic at just about every cybersecurity conference. Zero trust is a strategic approach to cybersecurity that secures an organization by eliminating implicit trust and continuously validates every stage of a digital interaction. ZTNA is an IT security solution that provides secure remote access to an organization’s applications, data and services based on clearly defined access control policies.

Our latest CF List focuses on zero trust security. We last tackled zero-trust in July 2021, and cybersecurity continues to evolve rapidly. Analysts with Omdia, S&P Global Market Intelligence and Forrester weighed in on zero-trust security market trends and what it takes to be a successful provider.

Massive Growth Anticipated in Zero Trust Security Market

According to MarketsandMarkets, the global zero trust security market should exceed $60 billion by 2027, registering a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 17.3%. Analysts value the market today at $27.4 billion.

Forrester’s Heath Mullins

Heath Mullins is a senior analyst with Forrester. He said zero-trust security adoption has increased this year.

“The U.S. federal market is rapidly adopting zero trust principles, strategies and architecture,” he said. “This adoption has primarily been driven by executive orders and Office of Management and Budget (OMB) memos. Highly regulated industries (infrastructure, energy, financials and medical) are taking a closer look as they may have to follow suit in the next three-to-five years.”

Organizations ‘Inundated’ with Zero Trust Marketing

Clients have been “inundated” with vendor zero trust marketing, Mullins said.

“It seems that every security vendor has a zero-trust story,” he said. “And they are not shy about sharing it. This is both a blessing and a curse. Zero trust is an all-encompassing architecture. So I don’t consider vendor alignment with zero trust principles to be a bad thing. It does, however, create confusion for the client. The most interesting push in the market has been security capability consolidation into platform offerings, aka the single throat to choke model. These combined, adjacent – and in some cases overlapping – capabilities allow clients to address multiple zero trust focus areas via a single vendor acquisition. Niche/best-of-breed vendors are having a hard time keeping up, though they are still very important when addressing coverage gaps, which may not be addressed by a platform offering.”

Rik Turner is principal analyst at Omdia, which shares a parent company with Channel Futures (Informa). He said vendors are increasingly entering the zero-trust market. Some are launching zero trust architecture (ZTA) offerings in isolation. Others are launching full-scale secure access service edge (SASE) services, of which ZTNA is a key component.

Omdia’s Rik Turner

“Differentiation is indeed challenging in such a busy and competitive market,” he said. “My impression is that ZTA as a standalone technology (whether delivered as a service or as licensed software) is a smaller addressable market than SASE, since the latter offers all an enterprise’s branch and remote worker networking and security requirements, all delivered as a service, so opex instead of capex. I think SASE itself is differentiation vis-à-vis standalone ZTA. And I wonder how big the market for ZTA alone is and will be.”

Who You Are, Not Where You Are, Matters

Garrett Bekker is a senior research analyst with S&P Global Market Intelligence’s 451 Research. He said zero trust is not a product or tool, but a framework or philosophy for implementing security based on the principle of least privilege and relying heavily on identity as an access control mechanism rather than geographic location.

S&P Global Market Intelligence’s Garrett Bekker

“Who you are matters more than where or what network you are on,” he said. “ZTNA … has come to mean a remote access technology that is an alternative to a traditional VPN. We have data on ZTNA that shows enterprise adoption this year increased to 23%, up from 13% in last year’s survey. This is a nice jump, but still fairly low relative to other more mature security tools. It’s still early for ZTNA adoption, but it’s growing fast.”

We’ve compiled a list, in no particular order, of 20 top zero-trust security providers. It’s based on analysts’ feedback and recent news reports. The list is by no means complete. It includes a mix of well-known providers as well as lesser-known ones making strides in zero trust security. See our slideshow above.