Security & Endpoint Protection Suppliers

Tenable

Vulnerability management, Nessus and exposure management for enterprise security

Tenable is the market leader in vulnerability management and exposure management. Its best-known product is Nessus — one of the most widely used vulnerability scanners worldwide — along with the enterprise platforms Tenable Vulnerability Management (formerly Tenable.io), Tenable Security Center, and the overarching Tenable One. For organisations with NIS2, DORA or ISO 27001 obligations, a toolset like Tenable has become virtually standard. The licensing model is based on the number of assets (IP addresses, cloud resources, identities). This sounds straightforward, but the counting is notoriously tricky: IoT devices, container instances and ephemeral cloud workloads can quickly drive up the asset count. Organisations that do not actively manage their asset inventory see their Tenable invoices rise year on year without a corresponding increase in security level.

Barracuda

Email security, firewalls, SASE and backup for mid-market and enterprise

Barracuda Networks is a broad security provider offering products for email security (Email Protection), network security (CloudGen Firewall, SecureEdge SASE), application security (WAF-as-a-Service) and data protection (Backup). Barracuda is particularly strong in the mid-market sector and is sold through a partner model. Since its acquisition by KKR in 2022, the product range has been rapidly consolidated into subscription suites. The licensing model mostly works on a per-user basis (email, SASE) or per appliance (firewall, WAF). Over recent years, Barracuda has steadily increased prices and actively pushed multi-year contracts. Customers who do not renegotiate in time thus face regular price increases of 10-20% on each renewal.

Palo Alto Networks

Next-gen firewall, SASE and cloud security platform

Palo Alto Networks is one of the leading players in enterprise cybersecurity. The portfolio includes next-generation firewalls (NGFW), the Prisma SASE platform, endpoint protection via Cortex XDR, and a wide range of cloud security services. Palo Alto has aggressively acquired companies in recent years, pushing customers towards an integrated platform model. The licensing structure is complex: hardware appliances are combined with software subscriptions and cloud services, each having their own durations and renewal dates. This makes oversight and budgeting difficult without active contract management.