Product-led growth has been a hot topic lately, and there’s a reason why. Power continues to shift from the buyer to the end-user. It’s not enough to develop a good product and be done with it; users are demanding better experiences with the tools they use every single day. This reason has forced a lot of tech companies to focus on their customer acquisition, activation, retention, conversion, and expansion strategies on the product itself.

And as far as the cybersecurity industry goes, it’s no different. As an industry whose core values are transparency and security, it makes more sense to become a PLG (Product-Led Growth) company, right? But let’s get to the bottom of why! 

This article will cover: 

  • Checklist for product success in the Cybersecurity industry
  • Best product-led industry leaders
  • Cybersecurity as a Product-led Organization

Checklist for product success in the Cybersecurity industry

It’s obvious that cybersecurity needs more than strong defensive capabilities (any cybersecurity software must detect vulnerabilities and block threats with close to 90% accuracy). In order for cybersecurity businesses to be product-led, their corporate vision must align with their strategy through value-oriented outcomes. Therefore, it should also focus on other areas of the product that will optimize user experience in order to ultimately increase acquisition, retention and expansion. 

At first, it seems complicated, but once we run down the different points for product success in the industry, it’s easy as pie! Here are a few features cybersecurity companies should have as part of their product or service in order to be more Product-Led. 

Centralized management 

A cybersecurity product should allow users to access the many aspects of cybersecurity services or products in one place. So, you may have a product where users can access endpoint security management, network security management, and malware sandboxing management in one place. In fact, one-third of cybersecurity users agree that an all-in-one solution for configuration, policy, and reporting is a more accessible, valuable option. 

End-to-end encryption

End-to-end encryption provides an encrypted system that protects the exchange of user data. It also ensures that conversations between you and your users are kept private. Another aspect of this is making sure API and application endpoints are TLS/SSL only. It’s a sure way of making your customers feel safe and secure, building up customer confidence and loyalty. 

Cloud-based services 

Cybersecurity platforms should use cloud-based resources for processes such as file analysis, threat intelligence integration, behavioral analytics, and reputation list maintenance. In this way, your tools can integrate together in the same IT infrastructure to provide a faster, more cohesive service for your customers. 

Automation 

Use AI (artificial intelligence) and machine learning to help your security teams detect and respond to threats faster. As a result, your security professionals save time to focus on other tasks, while customers swiftly receive the service they need. 

AI can help improve the cybersecurity experience for users in 3 ways:

  • Threat detection: Analyzing and anticipating various threats to customers
  • Threat response: Automatically providing the correct security solutions for a specific threat
  • Human augmentation: Taking on the daily, repetitive tasks that allow the teams to focus on more important areas of their product or service. 

Customer support

Offering good customer support is crucial. Help users interact, solve problems, and feel comfortable. Find a versatile and complete proactive customer support solution designed to reduce tickets and centralize customer communication, all while providing secure end-to-end encryption to keep their data safe. 

Onboarding support

It makes no sense if your security product is the best, but your customers don’t understand how to use it. With such a technical service, ‌providing proper onboarding is essential. Good support at the beginning will reduce Time To Value (TTV), build brand advocates, and empower customers, turning your product into a more valuable one. 

A great way to optimize your onboarding is by using Product Flows to figure out users behavior in your product and target the areas where they need guidance the most. Use a customer feedback survey to gain insights into how well your customers respond to your product and help you refine your strategy. 

Best product-led industry leaders 

The upcoming generation of cybersecurity companies goes hand in hand with a product-led strategy. And lately, the tech world has been dominated by PLG companies such as Slack, Asana, Trello, GitHub, and more. Those companies have built a strong community of users around their products. In the cybersecurity industry, it’s no different.

Let’s have a look at the best product-led leaders in the cybersecurity industry and what Product-Led methods they do best:

Snyk

Snyk is a developer security platform that integrates directly into development tools, workflows, and automation pipelines. Snyk makes it easy for teams to find, prioritize, and fix security vulnerabilities in code, dependencies, containers, and infrastructure as code. 

The company offers an open-source tool, too, with 400,000+ developers online. As a result of being open-source, it builds enough trust to act essentially like a freemium tool in the long term and allows users to see value in the long term. By the time a company has to pay for Snyk, it’s highly likely they’ve used the freemium option for some time, so they’re already familiar with it.

Grey Noise

Grey Noise collects, analyzes, and labels data on IPs that scan the internet and saturate security tools with noise. This unique perspective helps analysts waste less time on irrelevant or harmless activity and spend more time focused on targeted and emerging threats. One interesting aspect about this company is their great online User Interface – Community – where users can test up to 50 IPs per day. Grey Noise is a great example of immediately demonstrating product value to customers in order to guarantee conversions and retention. 

Kolide 

Kolide focuses on making security a part of a company’s culture. As a result, Kolide integrates with Slack, a tool most employees use daily. What’s cool about it is that it messages your employees using Slack and provides customized security and compliance recommendations for their Linux, Mac, and Windows devices. It also offers easy-to-follow self-remediation instructions to crowdsource IT and Security objectives.

As you can see, there are some great tactics that cybersecurity companies are implementing in order to become more Product-Led. And the best way of becoming more product-led yourself is by finding the right product success tool that offers a lot of these features and tools proven to improve user experience.

In fact, FROGED offers many of these features in just one tool. Like Kolide, you can use over 2K integrations with FROGED, including Slack, Whatsapp and Zapier. What’s more, unlike many live chat products, we offer end-to-end encryption that keeps all customer communication and user data 100% safe. You can also get start-to-finish support with your customer onboarding process and customer service, through intelligent Product Flows. 

Cybersecurity as a Product-Led Organization

As you can see, cybersecurity as a product-led organization has lots of potential to grow in the future. But, in order to become one of these businesses, you need to consider all the factors we have outlined. 

Building a PLG company requires a deep understanding of what motivates customers to stick around. It requires empowered product teams, strong researchers, and a continuous discovery mindset.

To conclude, it’s still early to define the cybersecurity industry as PLG. Nevertheless, analyzing what companies are doing and what users are demanding, we believe the product-led strategy in cybersecurity is here to stay. So jump on the bandwagon early! 

Check our last article for more insights on Product-Led Growth!