Goodbye to the Cybersecurity Punk: Splunk

The future of cybersecurity is data and machine learning

I am sad to see Cisco’s take-over of Splunk — but I suppose it’s all part of business. Two of our spin-outs were acquired by large companies, and those who invested in them received a reward for their investment. The funds generated will hopefully be re-invested into new businesses, and the people who led them will move on and create other companies. And, so, can we ever build a company at scale in technology without IBM, Google, Microsoft or Cisco buying them out? Will we ever see a tech unicorn in Scotland ever again?

But, it is generally not healthy for innovation to have just a few powerful companies that have control of a market. Overall, Splunk was a punk and completely disrupted the security market — and while HP (Arcsight), IBM (QRADAR) and others sat back on the existing products.

Splunk could see the world of cybersecurity was going to focus increasingly on data — and in logging every data element that might be needed in the future.

I do not think that we will ever be able to create another Google, Microsoft or Apple again, as when a new company disrupts a market, large companies will come in and buy them out. This is a shame, as large companies often struggle to innovate and can just sit back and wait for new companies to grow and then take over. Have we allowed some companies to become too large and too powerful? Is it unfair for competition? Should large companies in cybersecurity be split up?

Cisco knows the future of cybersecurity … data and machine learning, and Splunk’s platform integrates these well:

Goodbye Splunk .. you have been amazing! A true star!