The 10 Most Valuable Cybersecurity Companies Right Now

The 10 most valuable cybersecurity companies are worth more than $229 billion combined. Here’s a look at the big product, acquisition and channel bets they’ve made to establish and maintain their dominance.

Shining Stars

The 10 most valuable companies in cybersecurity were worth more than $229 billion combined as of Thursday, with one vendor nearly doubling its market cap over the past 12 months, two vendors more than tripling their valuations, and one vendor more than quadrupling its valuation. This CRN analysis focused on the 27 publicly traded companies that derive a majority of their revenue from cybersecurity.

Success in the financial markets was often accompanied by rapid revenue and headcount expansion, with seven companies expecting to boost sales in their current fiscal year by at least 18 percent and four projecting sales growth of at least 40 percent. Six vendors have grown the size of their workforce by at least 16 percent over the past 12 months, while four have boosted headcount by at least 37 percent.

Seven of the most valuable cybersecurity companies have been founded since 2000, while five have conducted their initial public offerings since 2017. Three of the vendors were established to secure networks, three were founded to secure endpoints, two were established to secure the web, one was founded to secure email, and one was established to secure identities.

Here’s a look at the big technology, acquisition and channel bets the 10 most valuable cybersecurity companies have made over the past year to establish and maintain their dominance.

10. Proofpoint

Valuation: $7.57 billion

Proofpoint has the 23rd fastest-growing cybersecurity stock over the past year, with the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based email security vendor’s stock price increasing by 7 percent to $131.25 per share. The company expects revenue for its 2020 fiscal year, which ended Dec. 31, to surge ahead by 18 percent to $1.04 billion.

Innovations to the Proofpoint Cloud Access Security Broker were introduced to help safeguard common cloud applications such as Amazon Web Services, Box, Google G Suite, Microsoft Office 365 and Slack. The firm debuted the ObserveIT Insider Threat Management platform to provide insider risk detection, faster incident response and broader visibility across user activity, data interaction and threat context.

Then in December, Proofpoint brought on longtime Bitdefender and Fortinet partner leader Joe Sykora to serve as the fast-growing email security vendor’s first-ever global channel chief. Proofpoint has increased its headcount by 9 percent over the past year to 3,617 people, with the most aggressive hiring taking place in the company’s sales and engineering departments.

9. Trend Micro

Valuation: $7.6 billion

Trend Micro has the 24th fastest-growing cybersecurity stock over the past year, with the Tokyo-based platform security vendor’s stock price increasing by 4 percent to $54.04 per share. The company expects to increase sales by 5 percent over the company’s 2020 fiscal year, which ended Dec. 31, to approximately $1.6 billion.

Trend Micro Cloud One – Network Security debuted in November for customers migrating their servers to the cloud, offering virtual private cloud protection at scale to support compliance requirements. That same month, Trend Micro Cloud One – Application Security launched to stop runtime attacks before they occur and help developers pinpoint vulnerabilities in their code that hackers could exploit.

Then in January, Cloud One – Container Security debuted to help developers minimize application downtime across Kubernetes by easing the security of container builds, deployments and runtime workflows. Trend Micro has expanded its workforce by 4 percent over the past year to 6,739 people, with the most aggressive hiring taking place in the company’s engineering and sales departments.

8. McAfee

Valuation: $8.61 billion

McAfee’s stock has climbed by 8 percent to $20.31 per share since the San Jose, Calif.-based platform security vendor’s stock began trading on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange on Oct. 22, 2020. The company is expected to boost revenue by 9 percent over the company’s 2020 fiscal year, which ended Dec. 26, to approximately $2.87 billion.

The company bolstered Unified Cloud Edge in October with first-of-its-kind integrated remote browser isolation technology, unified data loss prevention, and incident management across devices, networks, web and the cloud. The McAfee MVision Cloud Native Application Protection Platform delivers data protection, threat prevention, governance and compliance throughout the application lifecycle.

Also in October, McAfee MVision XDR was unveiled to offer cloud-based advanced threat management with coverage across the attack lifecycle, prioritization to protect what matters, easy orchestration and efficient response. The company’s headcount remains unchanged at 8,972 people over the past year, with staffing growth taking place in the company’s engineering and business development departments.

7. Check Point

Valuation: $18.94 billion

Check Point has the 16th fastest-growing cybersecurity stock over the past year, with the San Carlos, Calif.-based platform security vendor’s stock price increasing by 18 percent to $135.06 per share. The company is expecting to increase sales by 3 percent over the company’s 2020 fiscal year, which ended Dec. 31, to roughly $2.05 billion.

The company’s CloudGuard Cloud Native Security unifies cloud security posture management, serverless and container protection, and threat intelligence to be managed in a single pane of glass. Then in July, Check Point Infinity SOC was launched to unify threat prevention, detection, investigation and remediation in a single platform and give customers security and operational efficiency via log filtering.

The company’s September acquisition of Odo Security has made working from home safer by enabling customers to securely connect any number of remote employees to everything from any location. Check Point has boosted its headcount by 3 percent over the past year to 5,785 employees, with the most aggressive hiring coming in the information technology and engineering departments.

6. Cloudflare

Valuation: $23.29 billion

Cloudflare has the fastest-growing stock in the entire sector over the past year, with the San Francisco-based security and performance services vendor’s stock price increasing by 324 percent to $75.79 per share. The company is expecting to grow revenue by 47 percent over the company’s 2020 fiscal year, which ended Dec. 31, to $423 million.

The company bought browser isolation firm S2 Systems for $39.2 million to protect endpoints from zero-day vulnerabilities without sacrificing speed, user experience or website compatibility. Cloudflare rolled out an identity and access management offering that secures, monitors and authenticates user access, and a tool that secures and filters outbound Internet traffic to protect workers from web threats.

The debut of Cloudflare One means that firms can protect their workforce in a flexible and scalable way without compromising security as distributed teams work from multiple devices and personal networks. Cloudflare has leveraged its market traction to boost headcount by 40 percent over the past year to 1,857 people, with its most aggressive hiring coming in the sales arena.

5. Fortinet

Valuation: $23.98 billion

Fortinet has the 13th fastest-growing cybersecurity stock over the past year, with the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based platform security vendor’s stock price increasing by 28 percent to $148.12 per share. The company expects to ride its product innovation to 19 percent annual sales growth in its 2020 fiscal year, which ended Dec. 31, with revenue surging to roughly $2.57 billion.

Fortinet stepped up its game around SASE by purchasing Opaq for $8 million to strengthen distributed network protection from data centers and branch offices to remote users and Internet of Things devices. The company also bought Panopta for $34 million to gain visibility into and automate management of components like servers, containers, applications, databases, virtual appliances and cloud infrastructure.

Fortinet introduced two ruggedized firewalls to bring SD-WAN to challenging operational settings or remote locations that aren’t controlled, accounting for factors such as ranging temperatures and vibrations or movement that can wreak havoc on IT gear. Fortinet has also increased its headcount by 16 percent over the past year to 8,017 people, led by hires on the business development and sales teams.

4. Zscaler

Valuation: $27.41 billion

Zscaler has the second fastest-growing cybersecurity stock over the past year, with the San Jose, Calif.-based cloud security vendor’s stock price increasing by 264 percent to $204.24 per share. The company’s year-over-year revenue for the 2021 fiscal year, which ends July 31, is expected to jump by 41.4 percent to $610 million.

Zscaler broadened its capabilities with a pair of acquisitions, buying cloud security posture management startup Cloudneeti for $8.9 million in April to prevent and remediate application misconfigurations in the cloud. The company then purchased early-stage vendor Edgewise Networks for $30.7 million in May to better protect application-to-application communications in public cloud and data center settings.

Zscaler Cloud Protection debuted in December to minimize the attack surface and automate globally enforced security policies across organizations’ multi-cloud footprint, extending a zero-trust approach to cloud workloads. The company has also increased its headcount by 46 percent over the past year to 2,600 people, with the most aggressive hiring occurring around business development and sales.

3. Okta

Valuation: $32.81 billion

Okta has the sixth fastest-growing cybersecurity stock over the past year, with the San Francisco-based identity and access management vendor’s stock price increasing by 98 percent to $253.57 per share. Partner and product investments have driven new customers to Okta, with the company expecting to grow year-over-year revenue by 40 percent in the company’s fiscal year ending Jan. 31 to $822.5 million.

Okta in June debuted a joint offering with Palo Alto Networks that offers a consistent, responsive and secure experience from any location for all applications, regardless of the device. Four months later, the company launched Okta Devices SDK, which allows developers to enable passwordless authentication through branded push notifications with biometric capabilities, minimizing friction for end-users.

The company doubled down on the channel in 2020, simplifying its training and accreditation process to make it easier for solution providers to get both sales and technical certifications. And Okta has beefed up its staffing to support continued innovation, with headcount growing by 37 percent on a year-over-year basis to 3,614 people driven by aggressive hiring around business development and engineering.

2. Palo Alto Networks

Valuation: $33.19 billion

Palo Alto Networks has the tenth fastest-growing cybersecurity stock over the past year, with the Santa Clara, Calif.-based platform security vendor’s stock price increasing by 46 percent to $342.95 per share. Customers are flocking to all of Palo Alto Networks’ new features and capabilities, with sales in the company’s 2021 fiscal year, which ends July 31, expected to surge nearly 21 percent to $4.12 billion.

The world’s largest pure-play cybersecurity vendor spent $1.49 billion in 2020 on three acquisitions to stay ahead of the competition. Palo Alto Networks started with the $420 million buy of SD-WAN player CloudGenix to accelerate the onboarding of remote branches and retail stores onto the Palo Alto Networks Prisma Access secure access service edge (SASE) platform.

Then came the $265 million purchase of risk management and digital forensics consulting firm The Crypsis Group, followed by the $800 million acquisition of Expanse to gain visibility into exposed and untracked assets in the customers‘ ecosystem. The company has increased its headcount by 16 percent over the past year to 9,107 employees driven by new roles in engineering and business development.

1. CrowdStrike

Valuation: $45.63 billion

CrowdStrike has the third fastest-growing cybersecurity stock over the past year, with the endpoint security vendor’s stock price increasing by 237 percent to $206.06 per share. Massive displacement of both legacy and next-generation endpoint security vendors is expected to fuel a 78 percent increase in year-over-year revenue for CrowdStrike in the company’s fiscal year ending Jan. 31 to $857.5 million.

CrowdStrike got into the access control and threat prevention space with its $96 million buy of Preempt Security to help clients protect identity data without compromising productivity or the user experience. CrowdStrike Endpoint Recovery Services debuted in February, bringing together the Falcon platform, threat intelligence and real-time response to accelerate business recovery from cyber intrusions.

The October debut of CrowdStrike Falcon Horizon allows for the automation of cloud security management across the app development lifecycle, enabling customers to securely deploy applications in the cloud. CrowdStrike has also increased its headcount by 41 percent over the past year to 3,083 people, with the most aggressive hiring occurring for the business development and engineering teams.