Recent growth decelerations among top cybersecurity firms have many analysts worried that the industry has finally reached its tipping point. The industry, which has been growing exponentially for years, has seen slow growth and a recent decline in the stock market. Wall Street expert Jim Cramer explained on Wednesday that “there are many people who are saying that this is the peaking of cybersecurity” after seeing a decline in Israeli firm CyberArk’s stocks just a day after “strong earnings.” Leading cybersecurity firms Palo Alto Networks, CheckPoint, Fortinet and FireEye have also seen a decline in growth. Just last week, FireEye laid off 400 employees after blaming low sales on a “decline in the private sector’s desire for hacking response services,” a strange trend due to the number of recent data breaches among the public and private spheres.
However, others claim the demand for cybersecurity services is not declining but rather, the market is becoming oversaturated as “annual venture capitalist investment in cyber firms more than tripled from $1.1 billion to $3.8 billion” from 2011 to 2015, according to CB Insights. With a 235 percent growth rate in just five years, it seems inevitable that at some point, growth would surely moderate.