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A practical guide to cybersecurity analyst relations: how Gartner Magic Quadrant and Forrester Wave evaluations work and how security vendors win placement.
Luke "hakluke" Stephens
Author
Cybersecurity analyst relations is one of the highest-leverage, most misunderstood functions a security vendor can invest in. The big industry analysts (Gartner, Forrester, IDC, and a handful of specialists) shape how buyers build shortlists, write RFPs, and justify spend to their boards. When a CISO is told to evaluate three vendors, those three names often come straight from a Magic Quadrant or a Forrester Wave. Getting into those reports, and getting positioned well, can multiply your pipeline by two to four times. This guide walks through how AR actually works, what analysts want from you, and how to set realistic expectations if you're a startup with a tight budget.
Security buyers are risk-averse by nature. They're spending budget to reduce the chance of a breach, and nobody wants to be the person who picked the tool that failed during an incident. That fear makes third-party validation enormously valuable. A buyer can point to a Gartner Magic Quadrant and say "we evaluated the Leaders quadrant" without having to defend the choice on technical grounds alone.
The numbers back this up. Vendors that get included in a relevant Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave routinely see inbound deal flow climb, sales cycles shorten because procurement already trusts the category framing, and win rates improve when a rep can drop a credible report into a deal. The exact lift depends on your category and position, but a 2-4x pipeline difference between "not in the report" and "named as a strong performer" is realistic for a mid-market security vendor.
There's a second, quieter benefit. Analysts talk to hundreds of end users a year. The feedback you get in a briefing is some of the best market research money can buy, and it feeds directly into your cybersecurity product marketing and roadmap decisions. Even vendors who never make a quadrant get value from understanding how analysts frame the category.
AR is a relationship business, and the relationship runs through a few specific interaction types. If you only ever show up the month before an evaluation, you've already lost. Here's the machinery.
A briefing is a scheduled session (usually 30-60 minutes) where you present to an analyst. You talk, they listen and ask questions, and crucially, they cannot give you advice in a briefing. Briefings are your channel to keep analysts current on what you ship, who you're winning, and where the product is going. The mistake most vendors make is treating a briefing like a sales pitch. Analysts sit through dozens of these. They can smell a deck built for buyers, and it bores them. Bring substance: new capabilities, real customer outcomes, market data they don't already have.
Inquiry is the reverse. You (or your clients) pay for analyst time and you get to ask questions. This is where the advice lives. Vendors use inquiry to ask things like "how are you thinking about this category for next year" or "what would make our positioning stronger." Inquiry is also how you build a real working relationship, because it's a two-way conversation rather than a one-way pitch. Budget permitting, regular inquiry calls are the single best way to stay on an analyst's radar.
The big set pieces are the formal evaluations: the Gartner Magic Quadrant, the Forrester Wave, the IDC MarketScape. These run on a calendar. The analyst opens a window, sends a survey or questionnaire (often hundreds of questions), schedules demos, collects customer references, and scores you against a published methodology. Your placement comes out of that process. Miss the window or fumble the questionnaire, and you wait a year or more for the next one.
The vendors who do well in evaluations are almost never the ones who started preparing when the questionnaire landed. They started two years earlier by building a relationship the analyst actually trusts.
Analysts are professional skeptics. They've heard every claim, and their reputation depends on not getting fooled by marketing. To move them, you need three things.
One more thing analysts value: consistency. If your story shifts every quarter, they stop trusting it. Tight alignment between your messaging, your cybersecurity go-to-market strategy, and what your customers actually say in references is what makes an analyst comfortable putting your name in print.
Analyst relations is a long game, and there's no shortcut. The vendors who consistently place well treat their analysts like long-term partners, not transactional gatekeepers. A few principles hold up across categories.
Engage on a steady cadence. A briefing or inquiry every quarter keeps you current and keeps the analyst's mental model of your company up to date. Don't go dark for ten months and then resurface wanting a favour before the Wave.
Be useful between evaluations. Share market data, flag emerging threats you're seeing in the field, and introduce the analyst to interesting customers. You want to be a source of signal, not just a vendor asking for placement. Analysts remember the companies that made their job easier.
Take the feedback. When an analyst tells you your positioning is muddy or your roadmap looks thin, that's gold. Fix it and come back and show them you listened. Few things build credibility faster than visibly acting on an analyst's critique.
When an evaluation window opens, treat it like a campaign with a hard deadline. The work breaks down roughly like this.
Run this process the way you'd run a major product launch, because the payoff is comparable. This is core b2b cybersecurity marketing work, and it deserves real planning, not a frantic two weeks.
Placement is worth a lot more if you actually use it. Most vendors under-leverage a good result.
Check the licensing first. Gartner and Forrester have strict rules about how you can quote and reprint their reports, and violating them can get your usage rights pulled. Once you've cleared that, put the result to work everywhere it counts:
This is where strong analyst relations connects back to the rest of your cybersecurity marketing engine. A Magic Quadrant placement that nobody packages into sales enablement and demand gen is a trophy on a shelf. The lift comes from operationalising it.
If you're an early-stage security vendor, here's the honest version. You probably won't be in the flagship Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave for your category for a while, because inclusion criteria often require revenue and customer counts you haven't hit yet. That's fine. There are still high-value moves available to you.
Smaller and newer report formats are often more accessible. Gartner has Cool Vendor recognition and Hype Cycle mentions. Forrester has New Wave and Landscape reports. IDC has Innovators profiles. These reach the same buyers and are realistic targets for a company doing things well but still scaling.
Beyond formal reports, the relationship itself pays off early. Getting on an analyst's radar now means that when you do qualify for the big evaluations, they already know you. The startups that show up cold to their first Magic Quadrant questionnaire are at a real disadvantage against competitors the analyst has tracked for years. Start the relationship before you need the placement.
AR costs money, and it's worth being clear-eyed about it. The major analyst firms sell vendor subscriptions that bundle inquiry time, advisory, and event access. These run into the tens of thousands of dollars a year at the entry level and climb from there for larger packages. You don't strictly need a paid relationship to be included in an evaluation (briefings are free, and inclusion is supposed to be merit-based), but a subscription buys you inquiry time, which is where the strategic guidance lives.
For a startup, a sensible approach is to start with free briefings to establish presence, then add a modest inquiry budget once you can show traction worth advising on. As you scale and evaluations come into reach, increase the investment. Many vendors also bring in a fractional AR consultant or agency to manage cadence, prep questionnaires, and coach demos, which is usually cheaper than a full-time hire until your AR program justifies one.
Whatever you spend, measure it against pipeline influenced. AR is one of the few marketing investments where a single good outcome can move your entire revenue trajectory, but only if you've done the patient relationship work to earn it.
Plan for 12-24 months before you see meaningful placement. Evaluations run on annual cycles, and analysts need time to trust your story and watch you execute against it. You can get useful market feedback from briefings within weeks, but the pipeline-moving outcomes (a Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave placement) are a multi-year investment. AR is a long game, and treating it like a quick campaign is the most common way vendors waste the budget.
No. Inclusion in a Magic Quadrant or Forrester Wave is meant to be merit-based and depends on published criteria like revenue, customer count, and capabilities, not on whether you're a paying client. Briefings are free. That said, a paid subscription gives you inquiry time, which is where you get strategic advice on positioning and where you build the working relationship that helps you prepare well. Many vendors pay for inquiry without paying their way into a report.
In a briefing you present to the analyst and they cannot give you advice. It's your channel to keep them current on your product, customers, and roadmap. In an inquiry you pay for analyst time and ask them questions, so the advice flows to you. Briefings keep you on the radar, inquiry is where the strategic guidance and relationship-building happen. A healthy AR program uses both on a regular cadence.
Yes, if you're realistic about the targets. You may not qualify for the flagship evaluations yet, but free briefings, Cool Vendor or New Wave style reports, and early relationship-building all pay off. The startups that get to know analysts before they need a placement are far better positioned when the big evaluations come into reach. Start small, stay consistent, and scale the spend as your traction justifies it.
Analyst relations rewards patience, evidence, and consistency, and most security vendors underinvest in all three. If you want help building an AR program that connects to your broader marketing and actually moves pipeline (from analyst-ready messaging to questionnaire prep to operationalising a placement), get in touch with HackerContent and let's map out where you'd realistically place and how to get there.
Written by
Luke "hakluke" StephensLuke "hakluke" Stephens is the founder of HackerContent and a well-known offensive security researcher. He helps cybersecurity companies grow by turning deep technical expertise into marketing that earns the trust of a skeptical, technical audience.
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