Module 4 / 7

The value chain

Players, services and sovereignty

11 min

Cybersecurity is a global market structured in layers, with one particularity: facing the defence industry, a genuine attack industry has been built.

Public authorities & standardsConsulting, audit, integrationMSSP & managed SOCVendors & platformsIdentity, cloud, endpointPRODUCTS + SERVICES + TRUST + COMPLIANCE
Value is shared between products, services, compliance and incident response.

4.1Software vendors

The top of the market: Microsoft, CrowdStrike, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Cisco, Zscaler. Israel holds a singular place with Check Point, CyberArk or Wiz, a legacy of its intelligence units.

The strong trend is platformisation: consolidation around large integrated platforms, through giant acquisitions.

4.2Services: consulting, integration, MSSPs

Most global spending goes to services: audit and consulting (the Big Four, Wavestone), integration (Capgemini, Sopra Steria, Eviden), and above all MSSPs, which run security on behalf of their clients. The French company Orange Cyberdefense is a European leader; Thales covers defence and sovereignty.

Bug bounty and pentesting professionalise attack in the service of defence. Alongside them there is a grey market: zero-day brokers and spyware vendors such as NSO Group. France and the United Kingdom launched the Pall Mall process to regulate this market.

4.4Cyber insurance

Insurers cover residual risk and now make their policies conditional on the insured party's cyber maturity: MFA, backups, crisis plan, compliance. They have de facto become security prescribers.

4.5Public authorities

  • France: ANSSI, CERT-FR, Cybermalveillance.gouv.fr, ComCyber, Campus Cyber.
  • Europe: ENISA and Europol.
  • United States: CISA, NSA, NIST, whose standards are a global reference.

4.6The attack value chain

Cybercrime has organised itself like an economic sector: developers of ransomware-as-a-service, affiliates, initial access brokers, specialised money launderers. Attacking has become a trade with low barriers to entry.

Sovereignty: the French position

France has a recognised national agency (ANSSI), sovereign certifications, two industrial champions (Thales, Orange Cyberdefense), a fabric of recognised start-ups (YesWeHack, HarfangLab, Sekoia, Filigran, Gatewatcher) and a regulatory framework expanding with NIS2.

Sources

ANSSI (cyber.gouv.fr); Numeum on NIS2 (numeum.fr); ENISA; Gartner, structure and forecasts of the cyber market.

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