Nikoloz K.

Founder of CybersecTools.com (3,000+ security tools) | Fractional CISO for B2B companies | ex-Mambu, ex-EclecticIQ, ex-JDE

2025-11-17

I've added 3 new security tools to CybersecTools this week:

- NinjaOne Endpoint Management - Unified endpoint management platform with automation, patching, and remote access
- EmailInspect AI PoweredDMARC Monitoring - AI-powered DMARC monitoring and email authentication security platform
- iScan Advanced Scanning Tool - Scans repositories for exposed secrets, API keys, and credentials for bug bounty

If you're evaluating cybersecurity tools or building your own product, you can find 3,158 tools at CybersecTools.

2025-11-14

🚀 Big milestone! CybersecTools is growing faster than ever:

We’re now powering the community with:
- 3,154 tools
- 941 companies
- 1,331 members
- Nearly 500K page views

Thank you to everyone contributing to the cybersecurity community!

2025-11-13

Product-led companies treat security like a sales-led afterthought.

And it's killing their growth.

Sales-led companies:
→ Build security when enterprise deals demand it
→ Security questionnaires drive the roadmap
→ Compliance theater satisfies procurement
→ CISO hired when ACV hits €100K+

Product-led companies:
→ 10,000 users signed up before the first security review
→ Every user is a potential attack vector
→ Security incidents go viral on social media
→ Product teams ship 50x faster than security can review

So, what’s the real difference between these approaches?

In sales-led companies, security acts as a checkpoint. In product-led companies, security should be built into the foundation.

If you have 10,000 freemium users instead of just a few enterprise customers, it’s impossible to review every access request by hand.

When your engineers release updates many times a day, you can’t expect security to check every single change.

Product-led companies need:
→ Automated security embedded in CI/CD
→ Self-service compliance evidence generation
→ Security that scales with product velocity
→ Zero trust architecture from day one

They don’t need security features added as an afterthought during a later funding round.

While you were focused on perfecting your sales deck, your user base and your risk grew to 50,000 people.

Time to build security that matches your growth model.

2025-11-12

After cataloging 3,150+ cybersecurity tools, CybersecTools is live on Product Hunt to fix cybersecurity product discovery

- 3,154+ tools
- 944 use cases
- 2,630 free tools
- No pay-to-rank BS

14K+ security pros already use it monthly.

Live now:

producthunt.com/products/cyber

2025-11-11

Security vendors focus on meeting the needs of buyers instead of the people who actually use their products.

Here’s what that really means for your security setup:

Some CISOs view an impressive dashboard featuring claims such as "100% coverage" and "AI-powered threat detection." They approve the purchase.

At the same time, their SOC team deals with endless false alarms, struggles with awkward interfaces, and must manually integrate data from tools that don’t work well together.

This isn’t a mistake. It’s intentional.

Vendors focus on:
- Making their products look good in presentations, not in real-world use
- Adding features that help win contracts, not features that make the tools easy to use
- Addressing executive worries about compliance, not what practitioners actually need
- And majority of the sales teams have no clue what they are actually selling

The result is tools that look great in vendor demos but let you down in the middle of the night when your team is dealing with a real security incident.

I’ve seen security teams leave behind costly "enterprise solutions" and switch to open-source tools and Python scripts. It’s not about being rebellious, it’s because they need tools that actually get the job done.

The hard truth is that nothing will change until the people buying these tools are also the ones using them, or until users have control over the budget.

Your $500,000 security platform might look good on paper, but ask the person on call if it actually helps them work more efficiently.

The difference is where real security risks can be found.

2025-11-07

This week I reviewed and published 100+ new cybersecurity tools:

1. Seqrite EDR
AI-driven EDR solution for threat detection, response, and investigation

2. SecurEnds Identity Governance & Administration
Identity governance platform for access reviews, compliance, and provisioning

3.. Trellix Security Platform
AI-powered security platform for detection, response, and threat protection

4. Checkmarx One
Unified AppSec platform with SAST, SCA, IaC, ASPM, and AI-powered remediation

The CybersecTools directory now has 3,154 security tools, helping security teams find the right solutions.

2025-11-06

Security teams often focus on Mean Time To Resolution.

But this might not be the most important metric to optimize.

After leading many major security incidents at Forbes Cloud 100 FinTech companies, global FMCG operations, and enterprise banks, I learned what really helps a company protect its reputation during a breach.

It’s not just about how quickly you fix the problem.

What matters most is how well you communicate during the repair process.

Here’s what I’ve seen happen during real incidents:

Technical teams usually focus on resolving the issue:
- Engineers gather in the war room. They quickly triage and apply patches.
- There is a strong focus on speed metrics.
- Customer communication often comes last.

The result?

The incident was resolved in 4 hours, but customers lost trust forever.

Strategic teams, on the other hand, focus on communication:
- They provide clear updates to stakeholders every 30 minutes.
- They share transparent impact assessments.
- They reach out to customers proactively.
- They combine technical excellence with strong communication.

The result: the incident takes eight hours, but customers become advocates.

I’ve seen both approaches in action. The teams that focus on communication tend to retain their enterprise customers, while the others often lose them.

Here’s why communication matters more than speed:

Customers don’t see your technical work. They only notice how you communicate. If you stay silent, people panic. When there’s no information, speculation takes over and trust disappears quickly.

A two-hour incident with no updates feels worse to customers than a ten-hour incident with clear communication every half hour.

The truth is that your incident response plan isn’t complete unless it clearly spells out who communicates what, to whom, and when. It’s not just about how quickly engineers act.

Most companies learn this lesson only after losing a customer due to a major incident. The smart ones learn it ahead of time.

2025-11-04

Vendor selection isn't a technical decision.

It's a 3-year business strategy disguised as a feature comparison.

Most companies realize this 18 months too late.

Here's what nobody tells you

After reviewing 150+ B2B security programs, I see the same pattern.

Companies spend 200+ hours on technical POCs.

They evaluate API docs, feature matrices, and integration capabilities.

They think they're being thorough.

They're optimizing for the wrong variables.

Here's what's actually happening:

You're not buying a security tool.

You're making a multi-year commitment that will either accelerate or sabotage your growth.

That "technical decision" just locked in your entire security architecture for 3-5 years.

The Technical Theater companies perform:

→ Engineering runs exhaustive POCs
→ Security builds requirement matrices
→ Procurement negotiates per-seat pricing
→ Everyone checks boxes

Nobody asks: "How does this affect our €20M enterprise deal closing in Q3?"

The Strategic Reality nobody evaluates:

→ This vendor shapes your architecture for 3-5 years
→ Their roadmap determines your compliance timeline
→ Their integrations dictate your stack evolution
→ Their support quality impacts incident response
→ Their market position affects customer trust

Real examples I've seen:

The "best-of-breed" tool that created vendor sprawl → blocked SOC 2 audit

The "enterprise platform" with 18-month implementation → lost 2 major deals

The "perfect API" choice → sabotaged M&A integration strategy

Why this keeps happening:
Technical teams evaluate what they can measure.
Business impact is hard to quantify. Feature lists are easy.
So they optimize for demos instead of outcomes.
They buy tools that look perfect in POCs but break execution in production.

What actually matters before you evaluate a single feature:

* How does this affect our deal velocity?
* What does implementation timeline mean for growth targets?
* How will this constrain our next funding round?
* What's the real TCO including opportunity cost?

The brutal truth:
Companies that win enterprise customers don't have the "best" security stack.
They have the stack that makes strategic sense for where they're going.
Not where they are. Where they're going.

You're not choosing a vendor.

You're choosing your security future.

Treat it like the strategic decision it actually is.

Or realize it 18 months from now when it's too late to change course.

2025-10-27

I've added 3 new security tools this week:

- SoSafe Smart phishing simulations - AI-powered security awareness platform that delivers personalized phishing simulations
- Maze AI Agents - AI agents investigate cloud vulnerabilities and automate remediation workflows
- Radiant Logic RadiantOne - Identity data platform that unifies, observes, and acts on identity data

If you're evaluating cybersecurity tools or building your own product, you can find 3,060 tools at CybersecTools.

2025-10-24

This week I reviewed and published 5 new cybersecurity tools:

1. Alkira Zero Trust Network Access
Cloud-based ZTNA solution providing identity-based access control for users and apps

2. Keeper Privileged Access Management
Cloud-native PAM platform securing privileged access to critical infrastructure

3. ResponseHub Security Questionnaires
AI-powered platform for automating security questionnaire completion and management

4. Plexicus CSPM
CSPM platform for AWS, Azure, GCP, and OCI misconfiguration detection

5. ImmuniWeb® Neuron
AI-enhanced web app vulnerability scanner with zero false-positive SLA

The CybersecTools directory now has 3057 security tools, helping security teams find the right solutions.

2025-10-20

AWS Outage: What It Means for Business Continuity

Amazon’s largest data center region (US-EAST-1) went down for 13 hours.

Companies that thought they were protected weren’t.

What happened:

A technical failure in Amazon’s networking systems (DNS) caused a domino effect.

Applications stopped working.

Databases went offline.

Nothing could start up.

The entire region failed at once.

Why “backup systems” didn’t work:

Many companies use multiple data centers within the same region, thinking this provides protection.

It does, but only against individual data center problems.

When the entire region’s control system fails, all data centers in that region fail together.

So if the business runs entirely in one AWS region, there’s no backup when that region goes down.

The only option is to wait for Amazon to fix it. Yes, really.

Here is how to be more resilient against such outages:
- Running systems in multiple regions simultaneously (East Coast AND West Coast)
- Having a tested plan to switch regions when one fails
- Using multiple cloud providers (Amazon AND Microsoft/Google)

Why most companies don’t do this?

These solutions are expensive and difficult to manage.

They can double infrastructure costs and require specialized expertise.

If your organization can’t afford 13 hours downtime, assess actual downtime tolerance versus current capabilities.

Many organizations accept regional failure risk because full redundancy is cost-prohibitive.

The key is making this decision consciously, not discovering the gap during an outage.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

2025-10-17

@gary_alderson there is no better way to win our trust than by transparency

2025-10-17

Why do security vendors hide pricing?

"Contact sales for pricing"

I track 3,000+ tools on CybersecTools.

Hidden pricing vendors:
→ More traffic: 3,120/month
→ Fewer qualified demos: 27%
→ Sales cycle: 68 days

Transparent pricing vendors:
→ Less traffic: 2,340/month
→ More qualified: 90%
→ Sales cycle: 32 days

Hidden pricing attracts tire-kickers.
Transparent pricing attracts buyers.

Even "Starting at €24K/year" is better than nothing.

But vendors stay scared of transparency.

#infosec #saas

2025-10-15

AI Companies are allowing everyone to install unverified code, and no one is stopping them.

Figma's MCP tool has just had a serious security issue that allowed hackers to execute code remotely.

New MCPs are released daily, but AI companies fail to verify their safety before they are used by the public.

- Employees install whatever they find online.
- Security teams can't review everything.
- And we get Shadow AI that's everywhere.

One unsafe MCP could let attackers get into your data, or someone else's.

What OpenAI and Anthropic should do:

→ Mandatory code signing and developer verification for all MCPs
→ Built-in sandboxing - MCPs should run in isolated environments with zero host access by default
→ Explicit permission models - users must approve each capability that an MCP requests
→ Version pinning with alerts when the MCP code changes
→ Give enterprise IT centralized MCP registry controls
→ Enterprise admin dashboards to see what MCPs are running across the org
→ Observability and logging for all MCP actions
→ Human-in-the-loop workflows for high-risk operations

This is shadow IT on steroids, and every CISO should be losing sleep over this.

2025-10-14

Your ASPM isn't broken because of the tools.

It's failing because you're focused on the wrong metrics.

Everyone talks about:
- ROI
- Remediation time

But here's what nobody tells you:
→ 63% of critical vulnerabilities are fixed by developers themselves when ASPM is implemented correctly, not by your security team.

That is the metric that truly matters.

For example:
- When Wesco integrated its ASPM, it didn't celebrate faster scanning.
- They celebrated that development teams owned remediation, without security becoming a bottleneck.

The shift?
→ Security moved from gatekeeper to enabler.

Most CISOs are still asking: "How fast can we find vulnerabilities?"
But this is the wrong question.
Ask instead: "How many developers can fix issues without involving us?"

That's when ASPM evolves from a dashboard into a scalable operating model.

Stop focusing on tool consolidation as your main objective.
Start measuring and championing developer autonomy.

Make this your team's mission.

2025-10-13

I just shipped 240+ hours of work into the biggest CybersecTools update yet. Here's what actually changed:

🎯 FOR SECURITY TEAMS

→ Find tools in seconds, not hours
18 categories → 106 specializations → 944 specific tasks
Need "API security testing for cloud"? Go straight there. No more browsing broad categories.

→ See before you buy
Screenshots, features, integrations, all upfront
No more booking demos just to see if it looks right

→ Real reviews from real teams
Not testimonials. Actual pros and cons from people using these tools
Find out if "easy setup" actually means 6 months of integration hell

→ Research on the go
Mobile-optimized UI
Someone mentions a tool at a conference? Look it up right there

→ Contact vendors directly
No redirects. No "book a demo" walls
Just ask your question

📈 FOR VENDORS

→ Capture leads instantly
Contact forms on your page
No friction = no lost conversions

→ Show your product, skip the fluff
Upload screenshots and integrations
Let the tool speak for itself

→ Get recommended by AI agents
Our tools show up when people ask ChatGPT, Perplexity, and other LLMs for security tool recommendations
Reach buyers doing AI-powered research

→ No BS submissions
AI agents strip marketing speak anyway
Just tell us what it does

→ Mobile = money
Your tool looks good on phones now
Because that's where buyers are researching

And bunch of "invisible" optimizations on the back-end.

Less time wasted finding tools. Less friction getting customers.

#cybersecurity #cybersecurityproducts #ciso

2025-10-10

I added four new security products on CybersecTools.com

- Xygeni - Application security management capabilities
- Delphos Labs - AI-powered binary file analysis
- Guardpot - Deception security platform that deploys honeypots
- Apollo Secure - AI-powered cybersecurity compliance platform

2025-10-09

Another day, another breach: this time, it's Red Hat.

And yes, their own on-premises GitLab instance.

Shocking? Not really.

Today, it doesn't really matter if you host your systems on-premises or in the cloud.

2025-10-08

I use MCPs all the time, especially with Claude Code.

They’re game-changers for building and extending LLMs.

But let’s be honest: from a cybersecurity perspective, MCPs are a dangerous wild card for enterprises.

Right now, it’s almost impossible to verify which MCP servers are legit.

2025-06-02

The cybersecurity hiring paradox isn't what you think.

Companies claim they can't find talent. Candidates say they can't get hired. I've seen both sides of this disconnect, and it's not about a skills shortage.

What's really happening:

‣ Companies want unicorn candidates with every skill imaginable
‣ Employers offer mediocre compensation for expert-level requirements
‣ Many refuse to invest in training or developing internal talent
‣ Job descriptions ask for 5+ years experience for entry-level roles
‣ HR teams filter by keywords rather than potential
‣ Remote flexibility is promised but not delivered

Security leaders often complain: "We can't find qualified people" while auto-rejecting candidates with solid fundamentals for lacking [THEORETICAL CERTIFICATION] or experience with a specific tool they could learn in two weeks.

Meanwhile, talented professionals with practical skills get overlooked because they don't tick every arbitrary box.

The solution is simple but uncomfortable:

1. Truly understanding how hiring tools and processes work
2. Realistic job descriptions that prioritize core skills over tool proficiency
3. Compensation that matches actual requirements
4. Structured training programs for promising candidates
5. Focus on potential and adaptability over perfect resume matches

Stop complaining about the talent shortage while maintaining impossible standards.

Want to transform from security expert to strategic leader? → Join 1000+ cybersecurity leaders successfully bridging the technical-strategic gap with my weekly 10-minute read:

mandos.io/newsletter

Client Info

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