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4 MIN READ

Commentary



THE INDUSTRYWIDE CONSEQUENCES OF MAKING SECURITY PRODUCTS INACCESSIBLE

Accessibility won't solve all of the industry's problems, but it can help tackle
a few.
Ross Haleliuk
Product Leader and Head of Product, LimaCharlie
May 10, 2023
Source: Risto Hunt via Alamy Stock Photo
PDF


When you look at the cybersecurity vendor market, it's hard not to notice that
most vendors don't make their products easy to access, requiring prospects to
attend a series of demos, signs multiyear contracts, and commit to a minimum
spend, a minimum number of endpoints, or some combination of these. This
behavior of cybersecurity companies has several far-reaching consequences.




GATED SECURITY PRODUCTS PERPETUATE THE SECURITY TALENT SHORTAGE

The sales model in the cybersecurity industry that forces practitioners to
"qualify" by meeting the minimum spend requirements and signing long-term
contracts is perpetuating the talent shortage. Entry-level professionals are
effectively denied the opportunity to learn to use tools they for them to get a
job, such as endpoint detection and response, identity management, asset
management, security automation, orchestration, and others that have become
ubiquitous across the industry. This creates a vicious catch-22: Unless you have
experience using product X, you can't get hired, and you can't get experience
with the tool unless you're already in the industry.

Today, eager young people can start a career in offensive security by watching
videos on YouTube, participating in one of the thousands of capture-the-flag
(CTF) competitions, or taking part in bug bounty contests. However, to
accumulate the skills needed for them to get hired on a blue team, they require
access to tooling that is not by any means accessible.


GATING SECURITY PRODUCTS LEADS TO EXCLUSION AND HARMS DIVERSITY EFFORTS

Restricting access to security products creates situations where people from
underrepresented groups are not able to easily catch up with their more
fortunate peers who are already employed by enterprises with access to the
latest tooling. In other words, companies publicly championing their efforts to
increase diversity and get more people from underrepresented groups in the
industry are actually making it harder for the same people to get into
cybersecurity.



It's not uncommon to see motivated and driven people from underrepresented
backgrounds spend their free time studying and trying to level up their skills
so they can move up the career ladder. While scholarships and grants are
certainly helpful, what can be even more impactful is giving them access to
tools they need to learn to develop new skills, build résumés, and get hired or
promoted.




INACCESSIBLE SECURITY PRODUCTS MAKE IT HARD TO DEFEND SMALL BUSINESSES

I have met many security professionals who are interested in starting their own
services business — be it an incident response firm or a managed security
service provider (MSSP). The problem is that for an aspiring entrepreneur,
getting started is hard: Not only is the market incredibly competitive, but it's
difficult to access the tools needed to get everything set up.

We like to talk about the fact that small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs)
become victims of cybercrime because they don't know much about cybersecurity
and where to get started with hardening their security posture. Large security
firms typically ignore SMBs, as they are, by definition, small, and not as
attractive as a business opportunity: They need a lot, but pay a little. This is
where SMB-focused service providers can come in.



There are many security professionals with a strong desire to do their own thing
and an ability to help companies in their area. The problem is that to access an
endpoint detection and response (EDR), asset management, or cloud security
posture management solution, they are required to sign multiyear agreements and
predict and even commit to minimum spending. For obvious reasons, asking someone
who hasn't even proven they can make the model work for a multiyear commitment
is not reasonable. Unless the people trying to get started have enough knowledge
to leverage open source, they are typically out of luck and have to give up
their ideas before even trying.


LOOKING INTO THE FUTURE

We have seen a lot of progress in the past few years to promote cyber defense:
There are more communities for security practitioners, more blue-team-focused
events, and more defense-centric capture the flags. We are also seeing the rise
of open source in the industry, and a growing number of security vendors
starting to open up access to their products. We refer to this approach as
product-led growth. These changes are great, and we need more of them.

It seems like most security vendors today create thought leadership content
about how bad the talent shortage is for the industry, yet few are making it
easy for people to become job ready by learning how to use their tools. The
real-life impact of gated products on the careers of aspiring security
professionals is significant. The same is true about the problem of securing
SMBs.

Making cybersecurity products more accessible won't solve all problems in the
industry, but it will help us tackle a few of them, and hence, it is well worth
doing.

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