Check out the complete list of this year's top secure access service edge stories.

Zscaler found an unprecedented ransom payout of $75 million to the Dark Angels ransomware group – the largest ever paid by one company.

The vendor plans to introduce SD-WAN hardware to support the traffic demands within larger campuses and data center environments.

Wiz posted substantial revenue growth versus its cloud-native application protection platform competitors.

The Aspen Institute estimates that 9% of cybersecurity workers are Black, 4% are Hispanic, 1% are Native American, and 24% are women.

“CrowdStrike just created the best argument against consolidation and platformization: widespread outages,” Forrester's Jeff Pollard said.

Forrester identified Palo Alto Networks and Cisco as leaders in its latest operational technology security solutions report.

Small vendors will "expect fire-sale acquisitions to larger infrastructure vendors, bankruptcies and radical specialization," Forrester's David Holmes said.

"The battleground has really shifted over the past 12 months. It's no longer about pre-authentication/before login attacks," David Bradbury said.

Forrester noted when planning for the post-quantum migration, security, and research leaders often have to contend with some mixed messages.

Gartner labeled Fortinet and Versa Networks as challengers; Cisco as a visionary; and CloudFlare, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, and Forcepoint as niche players.

The report showed 87% of organizations experienced a breach in the last year that they can partially attribute to a lack of cybersecurity skills.

Forrester's recent Wave report for OT security solutions identified Cisco and Palo Alto Networks as leaders.

Akamai plans to build a unified API security platform based on the Noname platform.

Seven other market-leading enterprise products earned "recommended" status from CyberRatings' test.

One of the major advantages of the certification is its ability to streamline industry conversations and eliminate confusion.

Amazon Web Services' identity and access management tool now supports passkeys as a secondary authentication method.

“When we think about the partnership, the No.1 competitor that we see in my view is Palo Alto [Networks],” Aqua Security CEO Dror Davidoff said.

The primary driver behind the decision was Fortinet's ability to integrate multiple security solutions into a single platform, FC Barcelona's Sergi Ricart said.

"[Managed service provider] is like the neck on the head. They're making the choice," Daniel Bernard said.

Dell’Oro Group crowned Zscaler, Cisco, and Palo Alto Networks as the top three vendors in both overall and single-vendor secure access service edge markets.

The deal brings Fortinet into the highly competitive and growing cloud-native application protection platform market, said 650 Group's Chris DePuy.

Pax8 plans to add more security giants to its marketplace, CEO Scott Chasin said. “You've got Coke and you have Pepsi, we believe in marketplace neutrality."

Artificial intelligence and platformization complement each other and the synergy delivers better security outcomes, SVP Tanya Shastri said.