Europe Has Cybersecurity Startups. Now It Needs a Market That Helps Them Scale. - Security Boulevard

Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Reddit Email Share by Ignacio Sbampato on June 1, 2026 The cybersecurity industry narrative is a movie we watched many times: the best cybersecurity companies are built in the US or Israel, while Europe produces good technology yet struggles to scale it globally. There is some truth in that narrative. But it is also incomplete. Europe does produce strong cybersecurity companies. It has technical talent, serious security problems to solve, experienced practitioners, demanding customers, and a growing desire for trusted, local and sovereign technology. What Europe lacks is a market that converts that innovation into scalable revenue efficiently enough. That is the core theme of the latest BridgerWise Research report on the opportunities and challenges facing European cybersecurity startups and scaleups. The research looks at how founders and leaders see the market today: where they find opportunity, what blocks their growth, how they use channels, how they think about global expansion, and what they believe should change for Europe to develop stronger cybersecurity companies. And the findings tell a very European story. The Opportunity Seems Real The strongest signal in the research is demand for trusted and local cybersecurity vendors. 74% of participants selected demand for “trusted / local” vendors as one of the top opportunities for cybersecurity startups in Europe. That is a very strong number, reflecting what looks like a growing trend. Some cybersecurity buyers are asking more questions about where technology comes from, who controls it, where data lives, how vendors are governed, and whether strategic layers of security should depend entirely on companies from outside Europe. This is especially relevant in critical sectors: government, telecom, finance, energy, defence, healthcare and critical infrastructure. Regulation is another major demand driver. 53% selected EU cybersecurity regulation as a top opportunity. NIS2, DORA, the Cyber Resilience Act and other frameworks are increasing the pressure on organizations to improve resilience, governance and security controls. AI is also part of the opportunity landscape. 45% selected AI and advanced technology adoption as one of the top opportunities. So the first conclusion is simple: Europe is not a weak-demand cybersecurity market. There is demand. There is urgency. There are buyers with real problems. There are categories where European vendors may have a stronger trust position than they did a few years ago. But that is only half of the story. Thanks for reading Cybersecurity & Business! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Demand Does Not Automatically Become Revenue This is where the research gets more interesting. The strongest opportunity in the survey (demand for trusted and local vendors) is also strongly associated with some of the biggest scaling frictions. Among those who selected demand for trusted/local vendors as an opportunity, the top associated challenges were slow adoption by European customers, limited sales and marketing capacity, go-to-market execution, access to potential customers, and fragmented EU markets. That is the European paradox. Buyers may like the idea of European cybersecurity vendors. They may talk about sovereignty, trust and strategic autonomy. They may even be more open to local alternatives than before. But when it comes to actually buying, testing, deploying and scaling those solutions, the same old frictions appear. Long sales cycles. More proof. More references. More stakeholders. Procurement barriers. Country-by-country complexity. Strong incumbents. Limited customer access. This is something I have heard repeatedly from founders when interviewing them at Scaling Cyber. Europe is interested in European solutions, but slow, very slow. Europe wants innovation, but asks startups to behave like mature vendors. Europe wants alternatives, but procurement processes often favor the companies that are already established. One founder quote from our earlier qualitative work captured this perfectly: “In Europe, customers want proof before innovation. In the US, they buy the vision and expect you to get there. In Europe, you need to already be there.” That quote sums up the European scaling problem so well. European buyers are right to ask for proof as cybersecurity is a risk-sensitive market. Buyers should be careful. But when the proof requirements become too heavy, too early, they can create a market where only incumbents can win. The Main Bottleneck Is Go-To-Market One of the clearest findings is that the core constraint is not product development. Only a relatively small share of participants selected product or technology development as a major internal growth constraint. The top internal challenges were sales and marketing capacity, selected by 58%, and go-to-market execution, selected by 50%. European cybersecurity startups often have strong technology. Many are founded by technical teams, researchers, practitioners or operators who understand real security problems. But technology alone does not create a company. You need positioning. Messaging. Buyer access. Sales process. Partner readiness. Validation. Category clarity. Analyst visibility. Customer success. Repeatability. In one of my previous articles, I wrote that cybersecurity vendors do not win just by making bold claims. They win when they solve specific problems that buyers feel and understand. That becomes even more important in Europe, where buyers are risk-conscious and proof-driven. The companies that scale will be the ones that translate those ideas into clear value, reduce buyer risk, and build a repeatable commercial motion. In Europe, a strong product is necessary, yet it is rarely sufficient. The Market Itself Creates Friction This is not only a startup execution problem. The external challenges are just as important. These are structural issues that exist because Europe is not one cybersecurity market, it is many markets sitting next to each other. Different languages. Different business cultures. Different procurement habits. Different levels of maturity. Different local partners. Different public-sector rules. Different expectations around references and compliance. That fragmentation can create advantages, as we discussed with Simon Bauwens from Outkept. European companies are often forced to deal with complexity earlier. They may build products that are more resilient, more localizable and better suited to regulated environments. However, fragmentation also creates a scaling tax. A company can win in one market and still need to rebuild trust in another. It can have references in one country and still be treated as unknown in the next. It can have strong technology and still struggle to reach buyers because it lacks the right local partner. This is why the European scaling problem cannot be solved only by telling founders to “do better GTM”. They do need better GTM. But the market also needs better mechanisms for access, adoption and trust creation. Thanks for reading Cybersecurity & Business! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Channel Is Not Optional Anymore One of the strongest insights from the research is the role of partners. 66% of participants are actively pursuing channel partners, and another 21% are planning to do so. This highlights something I have written about before: in Europe, the channel is not just a distribution option but the default scaling architecture. If you want to scale across multiple European markets, direct sales alone is usually too expensive, too slow and too difficult. Partners already have local relationships, trust, service capacity, procurement access and market understanding. However, developing the channel is not magic and it requires the right understanding and approach. Many vendors treat the channel as if partners are waiting to sell their product the moment an agreement is signed. That is not how it works. Partners need a reason to care. They need enablement. They need margin. They need demand generation. They need a product that fits their model. They need clarity on roles, target customers and support expectations. They need vendors that create value for them, not only for themselves. In Europe, channel readiness is something vendors need to make a core pillar of their strategy early on. European Cybersecurity Companies Are Already Global Another finding that deserves attention: 53% of participants already serve global markets. This challenges the idea that European cybersecurity companies are simply local or regional by default. Many are global much earlier than expected. The “Rest of EU” is still the most receptive market outside the home country, selected by 74%. But US/North America also appears as a meaningful expansion signal. Among companies that see US/North America as receptive, nearly three quarters are already acting on a US entity or already have one. This does not mean European startups are abandoning Europe, even if some may. It means Europe is often the base, but not always the easiest scaling platform. Founders may go global early because their domestic market is too small. They may find that US buyers move faster. They may need international references to convince European customers. They may need capital, category velocity or ecosystem access that is harder to find locally. The best European companies will not be “European-only”. They will be European-born, globally relevant. “Buy European” Is Not Enough The research also shows strong policy concerns and some ideas. We left space for the participants to tell us what would be the one thing they’d like to change, and many called for procurement reform, simpler processes, fewer barriers to public-sector contracts, buyer-side incentives, and stronger mechanisms to help customers adopt European cybersecurity solutions. Some respondents want additional points for European solutions in public tenders. Others argue that grants should not only go to startups building tools, but also to customers buying local products. The sentiment is understandable. There is growing interest in European cybersecurity, and in some strategic layers this makes complete sense. Origin, control, data location and long-term trust matter. But I remain cautious about the simplistic “Buy European” message. I wrote before that protectionism will not make Europe a cybersecurity powerhouse. I still believe that. Forcing customers to buy European because a solution is European will not create global leaders. Sovereignty does not automatically mean quality or value. Local origin does not automatically mean better outcomes or understanding. The goal should not be to protect weak vendors. It should be to remove unnecessary friction for strong European vendors to compete. That means making procurement easier. Helping buyers discover European alternatives. Reducing duplicated certification. Supporting scale infrastructure. Encouraging partners and service providers to offer European options when they are competitive. Europe needs to build cybersecurity companies the world wants to buy. Thanks for reading Cybersecurity & Business! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work. Growth, But Not Convergence Yet The final finding is perhaps the most realistic one. 74% of participants expect the European cybersecurity ecosystem to grow in the next 2–3 years, but still remain behind the US and Israel. Only a small minority expect Europe to become globally competitive in that timeframe. That’s realism, not pessimism. Ecosystems change when the full system improves: founders, buyers, investors, channels, procurement, public institutions, acquirers, operators, talent, and successful role models. Europe has more pieces of that puzzle than before but the system is still not efficient enough. Europe can produce strong cybersecurity startups, scaleups and vendors. The question is whether Europe can help them scale before they are forced to move, sell too early, or become niche regional players. If I had to summarize the research in one sentence, it would be this: Europe has a cybersecurity opportunity, but misses the right scaling systems. The demand seems to be there. The trust opportunity is there. The regulatory pressure is there. The technical talent is there. The ambition is there. But founders are still fighting slow adoption, fragmented markets, weak access to customers, heavy proof requirements, GTM gaps, and a scale ecosystem that remains thinner than the US or Israel. Conversion is the real European cybersecurity challenge. Turning innovation into revenue. Turning pilots into references. Turning local traction into repeatable GTM. Turning trusted/local demand into actual purchases. Turning European complexity into global strength. That is what the full BridgerWise Research report explores in more detail and I invite you to download the full research here. If Europe wants to produce global cybersecurity champions, the right data to make the right decisions is important and I hope this report helps in that direction. The post Europe Has Cybersecurity Startups. Now It Needs a Market That Helps Them Scale. appeared first on Cybersecurity & Business. Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Reddit Email Share June 1, 2026 0 Comments