Platformization is rapidly emerging as the cybersecurity industry’s defining response to a world where every digital and physical touchpoint is a potential attack surface.

As artificial intelligence-driven threats escalate and infrastructure sprawls across cloud, edge and on-prem environments, security leaders are moving beyond fragmented point solutions toward unified platforms designed to reduce complexity and risk. But while the vision of seamless integration is gaining traction, the path to practical implementation remains uneven, exposing a critical gap between strategy and execution, according to Jackie McGuire (pictured, left), principal analyst, security analytics, operations and strategy at theCUBE Research.

TheCUBE’s Jackie McGuire talks about AI, security and platformization.

“Everything is now a security issue and the fact that almost our entire critical infrastructure from power to water to everything is now reliant on cybersecurity,” McGuire said. “Those are all becoming the highest targets for nation state actors.”

McGuire spoke with theCUBE’s John Furrier (right), co-founder and executive analyst at theCUBE Research, as part of a security analysis segment at the RSAC 2025 Conference, during an exclusive broadcast on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio. They discussed how platformization is becoming a critical strategy in cybersecurity as organizations shift from fragmented tools to integrated platforms to manage growing threats, complex infrastructure and changing buyer expectations. (* Disclosure below.)

Why platformization is shaping cybersecurity’s next chapter

The push toward platformization has become a defining feature of the cybersecurity market, as vendors seek to simplify sprawling, acronym-laden ecosystems.

Vendor consolidation and re-platformization are reshaping the cybersecurity landscape, but expectations often clash with reality on the show floor. As buyers shift toward experience-driven engagement, traditional booth strategies fall short. Despite talk of unified platforms, most vendors are simply clustering fragmented tools, exposing the complexity behind the industry’s platformization push, according to McGuire.

“I think we’re just consolidating those alphabet soups into specific platforms,” she said. “The IAM, PAM, all of the identity will become an identity platform. The data security, DSPM, all of that will be a data platform. We are seeing platformization, I just don’t think it’s quite the one login to rule them all that the big vendors would have you believe.”

This tension between marketing narratives and operational reality is especially stark among legacy players, many of whom are still wrestling with technical debt and channel complexity. The result is a fragmented customer experience that often masks deeper integration issues behind slick front-end interfaces. That’s opened the door for newer, natively integrated vendors to challenge incumbents with more cohesive offerings, McGuire emphasized.

“On the back end, a lot of these vendors who have grown by acquisition, it’s still a mess,” she said. “An IP is not called the same thing in one of their platforms as the other. While to the customer, it may look like that, when a lot of these large vendors sell 90, 95, 99% through the channel and really rely on integration partners and go-to-market partners, they need to be investing on the back end too. I think a lot of the younger upstart vendors who’ve been around for four or five years are going to eat these legacy vendors’ lunch if they can’t get both the front end and the back end platformed.”

As the security perimeter disappears and digital threats reach into physical infrastructure, the importance of truly integrated platforms continues to rise. Organizations are no longer just defending networks, they’re safeguarding complex, distributed environments where data, people and machines all intersect. The challenge now is not just technical unification, but creating experiences and solutions that align with how modern buyers think, behave and invest, according to Furrier.

“I call it the re-platformization, because some people are re-platforming, some are actually adopting platforms for the first time because they had best of breed,” he added. “The theme is homogeneous layers where you need data and people, using the Waymo example, where you have so much data and devices or things connected that you need to have data controls. That’s become a big theme.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the RSAC 2025 Conference event:

(* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the RSAC 2025 Conference. The sponsors of theCUBE’s event coverage do not have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE