Cylance champions its wins in wake of Gartner's cautions
Vendor claims 'unwavering and fanatical support' of clients six days after Gartner shifts its status on the magic quadrant
End-point security player Cylance has claimed it surpassed $100m (£70m) in trailing 12-month GAAP revenue in 2017, representing 177 per cent year-over-year growth.
The firm stated it was possible due to the "unwavering and fanatical support of over 3,800 enterprise customers" and said it is "one of the fastest-growing security companies in history".
It charted Cylance's growth rate compared with a selection of other publicly traded technology companies and the time they took to reach $100m in annual revenues.
Cylance's statement also highlighted the benefits of its flagship product, CylancePROTECT, and included comments from a client and an analyst an Forrester Research.
While there was no mention of it directly, the bullish statement was released six days after Gartner published its Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection Platforms. On this, Cylance moved back in terms of both 'ability to execute' and 'completeness of vision'. Although still classified as a 'visionary' (alongside the likes of Crowdstrike, SentinelOne and Carbon Black) it is now on the brink of the 'niche players' quadrant. Only Symantec, Sophos and Trend Micro were designated as 'leaders'.
In its 'cautions' section on Cylance, Gartner noted: "CylancePROTECT is cloud-based, with Cylance hosting and managing the console infrastructure directly," it said.
"The vendor finally started participating in the VirusTotal community in 2017, but has a poor third-party test participation record when compared with established EPP vendors."
It continued that administrative functions in Cylance's management console need to be more fully developed, according to Gartner clients.
"Cylance lacks adjacent security applications, such as inventory of installed applications, IT hygiene assessments and vulnerability assessments … Custom applications, or applications that have not been analysed by Cylance, may generate false positives," stated Gartner.
In its latest statement, Stuart McClure, chairman and CEO of Cylance, claimed that the vendor has always encouraged its customers to think beyond legacy solutions, to reduce complexity and lower security costs.
"Our customers have been living the promise that prevention is possible, despite industry experts who espouse the opposite, with their experiences with WannaCry/Petya and countless other zero-day malware attacks.
"Unlike every one of our competitors, Cylance blocked every single major campaign in 2017 with a completely AI-based approach that reduces layers, removes clutter and user friction, and provides silent prevention to the end-point," added McClure.
UPDATE: Since first publishing, Cylance has released the below statement to CRN.
Shaun Walsh, SVP of marketing at Cylance said: "In the Magic Quadrant, every vendor receives a list of strengths and cautions about their product and we encourage readers to read the entire report to understand the full breadth of Cylance's capabilities. Worth noting, is Gartner's praise for our strengths in terms of OEM sales, MSSP growth, and our commitment to the channel. If readers would like to hear what 170 customers and peers say about Cylance, they are welcome to visit Gartner Peer Insights, the web site which provides verified reviews from Gartner customers.
"The Cylance Prevention AI Model is still a new approach in the market. The traditional marketplace is based on the theory that more security layers achieve higher results. Unfortunately, the evidence does not bear that out. Cylance has taken a new and more effective approach."