{"id":183059,"date":"2026-01-30T12:33:00","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T17:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/30\/cybersecurity-vendor-research-is-broken-richard-stiennon-built-a-fix\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T13:15:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T18:15:10","slug":"cybersecurity-vendor-research-is-broken-richard-stiennon-built-a-fix","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/30\/cybersecurity-vendor-research-is-broken-richard-stiennon-built-a-fix\/","title":{"rendered":"Cybersecurity Vendor Research Is Broken – Richard Stiennon Built a Fix"},"content":{"rendered":"

Cybersecurity Vendor Research Is Broken – Richard Stiennon Built a Fix<\/a><\/p>\n

https:\/\/mitechnews.com\/mitechtv\/cybersecurity-vendor-research-is-broken-richard-stiennon-built-a-fix\/<\/a><\/p>\n

Publish Date: 2026-01-30 12:33:00<\/a><\/p>\n

Source Domain: mitechnews.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Author: <\/a><\/p>\n

Using an unordered list, summarize the following article with between 4 and 8 key points.
\nSecurity architects lose weeks buried in Google searches. Analysts build sprawling spreadsheets that are outdated almost as soon as they\u2019re finished. Vendor shortlists are shaped less by market reality than by which sales teams get in front of buyers first.
\nThat inefficiency isn\u2019t just frustrating \u2014 it\u2019s costly.
\nIn this MITechNews interview, Richard Stiennon, founder of IT-Harvest, explains why most cybersecurity buying processes are structurally broken \u2014 and how he built a platform to fix it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vendors know you don\u2019t have time to find alternatives,\u201d Stiennon said.\u201cSo they pitch whatever they want, at whatever price they want.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two Decades of Cybersecurity Market Intelligence
\nStiennon has tracked the cybersecurity industry for more than 20 years, long before today\u2019s explosion of overlapping tools, categories, and buzzwords. For the past six years, that work has been published in an annual industry book cataloging the global cybersecurity market.
\nMore recently, he transformed that research into a live intelligence platform: the IT-Harvest Dashboard.
\nToday, the dashboard tracks:<\/p>\n

Approximately 5,000 cybersecurity companies worldwide<\/p>\n

More than 12,000 individual security products<\/p>\n

Hundreds of functional categories based on what tools actually do \u2014 not how they\u2019re marketed<\/p>\n

Instead of static lists or rankings, IT-Harvest provides a continuously updated map of the cybersecurity ecosystem.
\nHow the IT-Harvest Dashboard Works
\nAs Stiennon explains in the interview, the dashboard is not a ranking system and not a pay-to-play analyst report.
\nIt is a searchable, structured research platform that allows security leaders to:<\/p>\n

Search by security problem, not vendor name<\/p>\n

Instantly see all vendors operating in a category<\/p>\n

Identify overlap and redundancy across existing tools<\/p>\n

Discover alternatives before engaging sales teams<\/p>\n

What once required weeks of internal labor can now be done in minutes.<\/p>\n

\u201cHiring just one cybersecurity professional to do continuous vendor research can easily exceed $200,000 a year once salary and benefits are included. IT-Harvest turns that effort into a shared, on-demand capability for a fraction of the cost.\u201d\u2014 Richard Stiennon<\/p>\n

The Cost Comparison CISOs Understand
\nStiennon encourages security leaders to think beyond software pricing alone.
\nHiring a single experienced cybersecurity professional focused on vendor research can easily top $200,000 per year once salary, benefits, and overhead are factored in \u2014 and even then, market knowledge remains concentrated in one role.
\nCommissioning custom research from firms like Gartner Group can also exceed $100,000, depending on scope, frequency, and analyst access.
\nBy comparison, an annual subscription to the IT-Harvest Dashboard costs $17,000.
\nFor many organizations, the platform complements internal staff while dramatically reducing time spent on manual research. Vendor discovery becomes a repeatable, shared capability, not a recurring bottleneck.
\nWhy CISOs and CIOs Care
\nFor senior security and IT leaders, the value isn\u2019t convenience \u2014 it\u2019s control.
\nThe dashboard supports:<\/p>\n

Stronger leverage during vendor negotiations<\/p>\n

Clearer visibility into crowded and overlapping markets<\/p>\n

Faster architecture and consolidation decisions<\/p>\n

More defensible, data-backed board discussions<\/p>\n

Instead of reacting to vendor pressure, teams gain situational awareness.
\nBreaking the Research Bottleneck
\nStiennon describes what he calls the research bottleneck \u2014 the moment teams stop evaluating options not because they\u2019ve found the best solution, but because time has run out.
\n\u201cHow many hours did your team spend on vendor research last month?\u201d he asks.\u201cI already know the answer. Too many.\u201d
\nThe IT-Harvest Dashboard is designed to break that cycle.
\nWhat used to take weeks now takes minutes.
\nWatch the Interview and See the Dashboard
\nIn the full MITechNews interview above, Stiennon walks through:<\/p>\n

Why cybersecurity markets are so hard to evaluate<\/p>\n

How IT-Harvest structures vendor and product data<\/p>\n

Why time pressure consistently favors vendors over buyers<\/p>\n

CISOs and CIOs interested in a live walkthrough can request a demo at dashboard.IT-Harvest.com.When scheduling, mention code MItech919.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Cybersecurity Vendor Research Is Broken – Richard Stiennon Built a Fix https:\/\/mitechnews.com\/mitechtv\/cybersecurity-vendor-research-is-broken-richard-stiennon-built-a-fix\/ Publish Date: 2026-01-30…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":183060,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/mitechnews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/it-harvest-cybersecurity-dashboard-hero-image-1920x1080-1.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[24],"class_list":["post-183059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cybersecurity","tag-cybersecurity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183059"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183059\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":183061,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183059\/revisions\/183061"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/183060"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/testing.news-you-need.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}