Full Report
What cybersecurity trends will we see in this new year? In this blog, we share some hot takes and predictions for 2022.
Analysis Summary
# Industry News: Huntress Forecasts 2022: Shift Toward Simplified Security and SMB Maturity
## Summary
Huntress leadership released a series of "hot takes" and strategic predictions for 2022, emphasizing the need for vendor transparency and the modernization of security stacks. The analysis highlights a critical pivot point where Small and Medium-sized Businesses (SMBs) must adopt enterprise-level metrics to bridge the gap between technical defense and business value.
## Key Details
- **Date:** January 18, 2022
- **Companies Involved:** Huntress (Primary), Microsoft (Cited for SKU complexity)
- **Category:** Market analysis and predictions
## The Story
In a specialized "Tradecraft Tuesday" session, Huntress founders (Kyle Hanslovan, Chris Bisnett, and John Hammond) outlined a vision for a more disciplined cybersecurity ecosystem. The central narrative focuses on five key transitions:
1. **Product Rationalization:** A demand for vendors to cease "SKU bloat" and rebranding confusion (specifically targeting complex licensing models like Microsoft Defender).
2. **Post-Perimeter Security:** Formally acknowledging the death of the office-bound "on-premises" security model in favor of endpoint-centric protection that follows the remote worker.
3. **Risk-Based Automation:** Encouraging IT departments to adopt auto-updates by weighing the operational risk of a patch against the security reward of preventing an exploit.
4. **Professionalization of the SMB:** A push for smaller IT teams to move beyond "free" bundled software and start utilizing KPIs like Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR).
5. **Technical Literacy:** Improving the industry's understanding of the differences between AV, EDR, MDR, and XDR to ensure buyers select tools that actually match their threat profiles.
## Business Impact
### For the Companies Involved
- **Huntress:** Positions itself as a simplified, transparent alternative to "big box" vendors with confusing pricing models.
- **Legacy Vendors:** Faces pressure to simplify product catalogs or risk losing market share to more agile, transparent competitors.
### For Competitors
- The call for "straightforward offerings" challenges competitors to compete on efficacy and ease of use rather than complex bundle-pricing strategies.
### For Customers
- End users stand to benefit from clearer value propositions, allowing them to build more effective security stacks without overlapping functionalities or hidden costs.
### For the Market
- There is a forecasted shift from network-based security spend to endpoint-based spend, reflecting the permanent reality of hybrid work.
## Technical Implications
The shift toward **EDR (Endpoint Detection and Response) and MDR (Managed Detection and Response)** over legacy Antivirus (AV) marks a technical move toward behavioral analysis rather than signature-based detection. Additionally, the move toward **auto-updates** requires a more sophisticated orchestration of IT operations to prevent system breakage while maintaining a high security posture.
## Strategic Analysis
- **Market Positioning:** Huntress is positioning itself as the champion of the SMB, advocating for enterprise-grade maturity scaled for smaller environments.
- **Strategic Benefits:** By advocating for the use of metrics (MTTD/MTTR/TCO), Huntress helps IT leaders justify security budgets to non-technical stakeholders.
- **Challenges:** Vendor inertia regarding SKU simplification remains a significant hurdle, as complex bundling is often a lucrative sales strategy for large enterprises.
## Industry Reactions
- **Analyst Opinions:** Analysts generally agree that "acronym fatigue" (XDR vs. EDR vs. MDR) is hindering customer adoption of necessary tools.
- **Market Response:** The shift toward remote-first security has accelerated the decline of traditional hardware-based firewall markets.
## Future Outlook
- **Predictions:** Expect a rise in "managed" services as SMBs realize they cannot manage the complexity of modern security stacks alone.
- **What to watch for:** Watch for whether major vendors (Microsoft, CrowdStrike, SentinelOne) simplify their mid-market licensing in response to customer frustration.
## For Security Professionals
Practitioners should prioritize mastering **operational metrics** (MTTD, MTTR) to prove the ROI of their security investments. There is also an urgent need to audit current stacks to remove "on-premise only" protections that provide a false sense of security for a remote workforce.