Futurum Research Cybersecurity and Resilience Practice Overview

Why It Matters

The trends reveal where cyber spend will flow and how leadership structures are shifting, forcing organizations to rethink security architectures and vendor strategies to stay resilient.

Key Takeaways

• Cybersecurity budgets modestly growing, driven by modernization, risk, transformation.
• Attack surface expanding in scope while compression demands faster response times.
• Buyers favor platform consolidation over point products for integration efficiency.
• Data protection now central, intersecting with AI and ransomware defenses.
• Cyber leadership increasingly reports to CEOs and boards, signaling strategic elevation.

Summary

Futurum Research’s Cybersecurity and Resilience practice presented its 2026 outlook, highlighting findings from its bi‑annual decision‑maker survey and framing the evolving role of analysts between buyers, sellers, investors and broader stakeholders.

The firm identified four headline trends: AI’s triple‑edge role (security for AI, AI for security, adversarial AI); a rapidly expanding attack surface that now demands context across endpoints, applications, data, identity and networks while compressing dwell times; a clear buyer tilt toward platform consolidation rather than best‑of‑breed point solutions; and data protection evolving from backup to a central AI‑driven security battleground. A fifth theme underscored cybersecurity’s ascent to a strategic enterprise function.

Survey data showed 73 % of respondents reporting modest budget growth in H2 2025, driven primarily by cybersecurity modernization, risk‑management upgrades and digital‑transformation initiatives. Over half of cyber leaders now meet the board at least quarterly and report to CEOs or CROs, indicating elevated governance. Notably, cloud‑security vendors faced twice the churn rate of network‑security providers, and buyers cited technology consolidation as the top reason for shrinking budgets.

These signals suggest enterprises must broaden skill sets, adopt integrated platforms for operational efficiency, and prioritize data‑centric AI defenses. Vendors that can bundle security functions and demonstrate strategic value to C‑suite stakeholders are likely to win the next wave of spend.

Original Description

Fernando Montenegro, Tom Hollingsworth. Analysts at Futurum Research sit at the intersection of technology buyers, sellers, investors, and broader stakeholders like academia and government to provide both quantitative and qualitative data to answer critical industry questions. Their cybersecurity and resilience practice, which underwent a rebranding to emphasize the necessity of resilience alongside security, focuses on analyzing major industry trends, such as the multifaceted role of AI, the expansion and cognitive complexity of the modern attack surface, the buyer preference for consolidation over point products, and the evolution of data protection as a core battleground. These insights are fundamentally supported by rigorous, biannual decision-maker surveys that capture demographic and procurement data to guide their research commentary.

The survey data highlights several key behaviors in the current cybersecurity landscape, most notably that 73% of organizations are increasing their cybersecurity budgets, albeit with a trend toward more modest growth focused on modernization, risk management, and digital transformation. While vendor-provided information often influences buyers more heavily than analyst reports, there is a clear, data-backed shift toward platform consolidation to drive operational efficiency and integration. Furthermore, the role of cybersecurity has become increasingly strategic, with a significant majority of surveyed organizations reporting quarterly interactions between security leadership and their boards, indicating that security is no longer an isolated technical concern but a central pillar of organizational strategy.

To provide more objective, forward-looking market analysis, Futurum Research has developed an AI-driven platform called Futurum Signal. This tool automates the collection and synthesis of public and private data to rank vendors based on five core assessment areas: business value index, product innovation, strategic vision, go-to-market capability, and ecosystem alignment. By utilizing this data-driven approach, the firm aims to eliminate the perception biases often found in vendor assessments--such as assuming market leadership based on brand visibility alone--and instead provide actionable, empirical intelligence for buyers and technologists navigating complex sectors like SASE, where the research differentiates between truly integrated solutions and those relying on third-party partnerships.

Presented by Fernando Montenegro, Vice President and Practice Lead, and Tom Hollingsworth, Research Director. Recorded live at Security Field Day 15 in Santa Clara, CA on April 29, 2026. Watch the entire presentation at https://techfieldday.com/appearance/futurum-research-presents-at-security-field-day-15/ or visit https://TechFieldDay.com/event/xfd15 or https://FuturumGroup.com for more information