Platformization is becoming a critical strategy in cybersecurity as organizations shift from fragmented tools to integrated platforms to manage growing threats, complex infrastructure and changing buyer expectations. Vendor consolidation and re-platformization are reshaping the cybersecurity landscape, but expectations often clash with reality on the show floor. As buyers shift toward experience-driven engagement, traditional booth strategies fall short. “I think we’re just consolidating those alphabet soups into specific platforms,” Jackie McGuire, principal analyst, security analytics, operations and strategy at theCUBE Research. said. “The IAM, PAM, all of the identity will become an identity platform. The data security, DSPM, all of that will be a data platform. We are seeing platformization, I just don’t think it’s quite the one login to rule them all that the big vendors would have you believe.” As the security perimeter disappears and digital threats reach into physical infrastructure, the importance of truly integrated platforms continues to rise. Organizations are no longer just defending networks, they’re safeguarding complex, distributed environments where data, people and machines all intersect. The challenge now is not just technical unification, but creating experiences and solutions that align with how modern buyers think, behave and invest, according to John Furrier, co-founder and executive analyst at theCUBE Research. “I call it the re-platformization, because some people are re-platforming, some are actually adopting platforms for the first time because they had best of breed,” he added. “The theme is homogeneous layers where you need data and people, using the Waymo example, where you have so much data and devices or things connected that you need to have data controls. That’s become a big theme.”