One thing I think happens in almost every maturing technology market:
Capability differentiation eventually compresses.
Early on, vendors win attention by proving they can do something new:
- Automate investigations
- Apply AI reasoning
- Orchestrate workflows
- Detect threats differently
- Reduce manual work
At that stage, capability itself feels differentiated because not everyone can deliver it yet.
But over time, markets catch up.
Competitors add similar features. Customers begin expecting those capabilities by default. Messaging starts converging. Every vendor starts sounding increasingly similar.
That's when markets usually shift from: "Can you do this?" to: "How does this actually operate in the real world?"
What Happened in the NGAV Market
I saw this happen years ago during the rise of next-generation antivirus.
Early NGAV vendors genuinely had a meaningful technical advantage over legacy AV products. They were much better at identifying malware, especially variants without known signatures.
Then the next wave of vendors arrived.
Suddenly, everyone had:
- AI
- Machine learning
- Behavioral analysis
- Next-gen detection models
The conversation quickly turned into: "Our model is better than theirs."
That kicked off what I think of as the "efficacy wars" phase of the market.
Every vendor claimed:
- slightly better detection rates
- slightly lower false positives
- marginally better test results
But eventually, vendors realized CISOs were not going to take on a painful rip-and-replace project for tiny improvements in efficacy alone.
When the Market Shifted to Operational Differentiation
That's when the market started shifting toward operational differentiation.
The vendors that started separating themselves talked less about tiny model improvements and more about:
- Operational performance
- Deployment simplicity
- Update quality
- Analyst experience
- Response times
- Platform reliability
- Support quality
- Ecosystem integration
- Influence over the product roadmap
That's when the divide between the long-term winners and the rest of the market really started becoming visible.
AI Security Markets Look Like They Are Entering This Phase
Honestly, I think AI security markets are beginning to enter a similar phase now.
As AI capabilities become expected, differentiation will probably move increasingly toward:
- Operational trust
- Workflow fit
- Governance
- Controllability
- Deployment models
- Visibility
- Integration depth
- Human-system interaction
- Operational outcomes
Because eventually, everyone claims intelligent automation.
Not everyone earns operational trust.