Going into 2026, the market will only become more competitive. Over the past several years, tens (or maybe hundreds?) of new startups were founded, most of which are still in stealth, but all of which are trying to solve various problems and offer new solutions. Most of them aren’t trying to address new problems – they’re going after the exisign markets, which means they’ll have to convince buyers to replace their existing solutions. That’s going to be pretty hard. Nearly a year ago, Eyal Worthalter published this post on LinkedIn that I strongly agree with:

“The “better mousetrap” pitch is dead in cybersecurity. Here’s why. Most enterprises have already laid their security foundation. EDR, SASE, SIEM, CSPM – the core stack is in place. Not perfect, but good enough to handle almost everything.

Last year taught me this: After demonstrating 40% better detection rates in a flawless POC, the CISO still walked away. Why? Because “better” isn’t enough anymore. Think about what we’re really asking when we pitch a “better” solution:

• Rip out existing integrations
• Retrain the entire security team
• Rebuild automated playbooks
• Revise procedures and documentation