First, the bad news. There will be no Security Yearbook 2026. What would have been the seventh edition of the only history and directory of the cybersecurity industry was not picked up by my publisher.
I had already come to the conclusion that, in the age of AI, it was too risky to the IT-Harvest business model to publish a complete up-to-date directory of all 4,000+ cybersecurity vendors every year. The amazing value we have built into the IT-Harvest Dashboard rests on an accurate list of all vendors, a list that took 5,000 hours of my time (not to mention the team’s time) to create and maintain. I envision some entrepreneur grabbing a free copy from one of the book signings at RSAC, scanning the directory, and creating their own database of the vendors, categories, locations, size, and growth rates that appear in the back of the book. It would be the fastest way to jump start a marketplace or compete directly with IT-Harvest. So the decision was made earlier in the year to stop publishing the Directory. Security Yearbook 2025 is the last edition to include the full Directory of 4,000+ cybersecurity vendors.
Every year I clear a week in November to pull together Security Yearbook. Then, when the final data is captured at the end of December, I finalize the manuscript and get it to the book designer by January 15 so we can print the book in time for the RSA Conference. What was I to do with that week I had scheduled in a cheap hotel in Mackinaw City?
The most dramatic change to the security industry is in the early stages of impacting everything. We only started tracking “AI Security” as a separate category in early 2024. In preparation for writing week I went back to look at the 512 vendors founded in 2022-2025. I looked at every one of those to extract all the vendors that are leveraging AI to either provide security for AI, or apply AI to security tasks. There are 290 in total.
Here then, is the good news. I am writing Guardians of the Machine Age: Why AI Security Will Define the Future of Digital Defense.
I am in the get-words-on-the-page stage so not ready to reveal the ToC or complete details. One thing will stand out though. This is the first time that all the players in an industry category will be included in an extended market scope. Instead of cherry-picking representative vendors in a report, this book will summarize our data on all 290 companies that make up the AI Security space. It will probably have to be updated next year as at least 50 of these will be acquired by then, to be replaced by at least 50 funded startups.
Guardians of the Machine Age will go on sale in mid-January. You will be able to get a signed copy from one of the sponsors’ booths at RSAC in March.