For years, cybersecurity buying followed a simple pattern of finding a gap and adding a tool. The result? Stacks filled with overlapping products, weak integrations, and security teams juggling dashboards instead of reducing risk.

Now the pendulum is swinging back. In a Gartner survey, 75% of organizations said they were actively pursuing vendor consolidation in 2022, largely because their environments had become too fragmented to operate efficiently. What used to be a best-of-breed philosophy is starting to look like operational drag.

The push toward consolidation focuses on fixing operational problems such as lost context, slow response, and broken control across systems, and not just owning fewer vendors.

Here’s where the center of gravity is moving.

Security Operations: Control the Telemetry, Control the Workflow

Security operations is one of the clearest areas of consolidation, driven by the push for unified threat detection and response. SecOps platforms sit at the center of detection and response, bringing together logs and endpoint signals within shared investigation workflows.

Historically, most enterprises built this layer using connected tools from different vendors. The approach worked unevenly, required constant upkeep, and often lost context across systems, which opened the door for larger platforms to step in.

Between 2022 and 2024 consolidation accelerated. Cisco’s $28B acquisition of Splunk in March 2024 combined a major network vendor with a leading security analytics platform. Around the same time, mergers such as Exabeam and LogRhythm reflected a broader move toward unified operations platforms that combine scale with advanced detection.

Deal volume supports this trend. Transactions increased significantly from 2023 to 2024, and more than a dozen major acquisitions and mergers reshaped the SIEM and XDR market during this period. By the end of 2024, only a small number of notable independent providers remained. This activity shows consolidation forming around the operational core of security, and the direction continues to strengthen.

In SecOps, consolidation works because it brings detection and response into a single workflow, helping teams contain threats faster and improve day‑to‑day operations.

Identity Security: Convergence into a Platform Pillar

If SecOps is central, identity is fundamental. Modern attacks often move through credentials and privileges, and access across people and systems depends on identity controls.

Between 2020 and 2025, identity‑focused acquisitions increased as organizations adopted Zero Trust models. Major deals such as Okta’s acquisition of Auth0, the consolidation of Ping Identity and ForgeRock, and SailPoint going private brought many identity tools under fewer owners.

During this period, different significant identity‑related acquisitions combined more than a dozen previously........

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