Trail of Bits Named in Forrester Wave as a Leader in Midsize Cybersecurity Consulting Services

Trail of Bits was among the select companies that Forrester invited to participate in its recent report, The Forrester Wave: Midsize Cybersecurity Consulting Services, Q2 2019. In this evaluation, Trail of Bits was cited as a Leader. We received the highest score among all participants in the current offering category, among the highest scores in the strategy category, and the highest scores possible in sixteen of the evaluation’s criteria.

You can download the full report here!

What is the Forrester Wave?

Forrester is a leading global research and advisory firm that offers a variety of market reports, research, analysis, and consulting services. The Forrester Wave is a specific Forrester evaluation that provides “a guide for buyers considering their purchasing options in a technology marketplace.“

When Forrester reached out to us to participate in their study, we jumped at the chance. We respect their publication a lot. In our view, the Wave is:

• A trusted source of truth for top companies – Forrester reports are the gold standard for citations on market data.
• It’s not a paid publication – If they find a weakness in a participant’s company, they won’t gloss over it.
• The criteria are thoughtful – It’s hard to fully comprehend what’s important in cybersecurity consulting, especially for someone relatively new to our niche industry. Assessing efficacy is tough even if you know what you’re looking for. Forrester overcomes this by getting feedback on its questions and ranking criteria from participants.

What happened?

Forrester reached out to us and our competitors for an introductory call on how to prepare as participants. We were given the option to opt-out of participating but told we would be included in the report, regardless. Participants then provided feedback on criteria that Forrester Wave would use to assess our competencies. Once the criteria were finalized, Forrester gathered data from us and from some of our clients on how we performed against those criteria. When their report was complete, they let all participants fact-check the report. Needless to say, we were pleased to see that we’d received the highest score in the Current Offering category, and among the highest scores in the Strategy category.

The results

In addition to our ranking, Forrester made this analysis of our strengths and weaknesses:

Trail of Bits’ innovation efforts set its technical services apart. Its unique services include binary analysis, blockchain security, cryptography, and software development — many of which rely on tools that Trail of Bits developed in-house. Trail of Bits is also actively involved in building the cybersecurity community, especially emerging talent. It hosts a variety of office hours and local meetups and develops free educational resources for all levels of cybersecurity professionals. Reference customers highlighted Trail of Bits’ thought leadership, deep expertise in fields like blockchain security and cryptography, and thoroughness as strengths. However, those high standards come with some drawbacks as customers also noted limited resources and price as concerns. Trail of Bits’ deliverables are quite technical, and clients needed to do some extra translation of those deliverables for nonsecurity[sic] executives. For clients seeking a high level of technical cybersecurity proficiency from its services firm, Trail of Bits is a top-tier choice.

Our reflections

We’re celebrating the good

Trail of Bits’ innovation efforts set its technical services apart.

Our Take: Indeed! Our investments in R&D, our focus on using cutting-edge open source tooling, and our preference for tackling tough problems helps us hone our advanced techniques and innovative approach.

Trail of Bits is also actively involved in building the cybersecurity community, especially emerging talent.

Our Take: We’re happy for this work to shine through! We’re passionate about empowering emerging talent with the information and skills necessary to break into our industry and push science forward with us. Sharing our proprietary tools open-source, sharing knowledge through online resources and our Empire Hacking meetup, and sponsoring emerging research are all core to our mission.

Reference customers highlighted Trail of Bits’ thought leadership, deep expertise in fields like blockchain security and cryptography, and thoroughness as strengths.

Our Take: We are intentional about focusing deeply on our niche skillset because it prepares us for solving our clients’ most challenging problems. We produce and use publicly available tools in our assessments, resulting in repeatable, verifiable results that other firms can’t offer.

We’re finding more ways to improve

Even as a Leader, this report shows us some opportunities for improvement. Our efforts to grow at a pace that meets increasing market demands for our services is a challenge. We prefer to hire well rather than hire quickly. We know that the price point of our niche services puts our paid expertise out of reach for some smaller and under-resourced companies. We will address that by continuing to offer our knowledge on our blog, our open-source tools on github, and our community resources like Empire Hacking and the NYC-Infosec directory. Finally, we are committed to translating summaries of our highly technical work for clients’ non-security executives. You can check out how we’re doing that in our public reports and presentations.

Overall, we’re honored to be included in this year’s report, encouraged by its findings, and excited to share the results.

Could you use a Forrester Wave Leader’s advice on a cybersecurity problem you’re facing? Contact us

*** This is a Security Bloggers Network syndicated blog from Trail of Bits Blog authored by Lauren Pearl. Read the original post at: https://blog.trailofbits.com/2019/07/16/trail-of-bits-named-in-forrester-wave-as-a-leader-in-midsize-cybersecurity-consulting-services/

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