Security News
Kyle Alspach, Wade Tyler Millward
While cybersecurity spending continues to grow, a number of major vendors in the security industry have recently cut staff amid the economic slowdown.
Job Cuts Come To Cybersecurity
While cybersecurity is widely considered among the tech sectors least likely to see spending cuts, security vendors haven’t been immune to layoffs in 2023. Cybersecurity company layoffs came earlier this year for some of the largest pure-play security vendors, including Sophos and Zscaler, as well as for a number of smaller product makers in the market. As sluggish economic conditions have dragged on, a handful of additional cybersecurity companies have turned to staff cuts during Q3 of 2023.
[Related: 20 Hottest New Cybersecurity Tools At Black Hat 2023]
Notably, these latest cybersecurity company layoffs have impacted employees at some of the best-established names in the industry, including Fortinet and Rapid7. A few of the recent staff reductions have been among the most significant in the cybersecurity industry this year, as in the case of Rapid7 and its roughly 470 layoffs disclosed in early August.
In many cases, however, the cybersecurity vendors that’ve laid off staff have positioned the cutbacks as the right move for the longer-term health of the company, enabling its spending to be targeted where the biggest opportunities are.
Built-In Spending
At the same time, a number of major employers in the sector, such as Palo Alto Networks and CrowdStrike, are not known to have carried out major layoffs in 2023 (or in 2022, for that matter). Apart from company-specific reasons, there are also a number of factors behind why there haven’t been more layoffs in the cybersecurity industry since the economic picture dimmed in mid-2022. Some of the unique factors for why cybersecurity spending is often more resilient than other segments of IT include intensifying cyber threats — particularly data theft and extortion, of late — along with increasing cyber insurance requirements and regulations such as the new SEC incident disclosure rule.
Still, staff at a number of notable cybersecurity companies have recently been impacted by layoffs — a difficult event, but also potentially an opportunity for other companies looking to hire talent.
What follows are details on the cybersecurity companies that’ve instituted layoffs so far in Q3 of 2023. CRN will update this list on an ongoing basis.
