WithSecure’s perspective on the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Endpoint Protection

16th time. One of four European vendors.

A Gartner Magic Quadrant is a culmination of research in a specific market, giving you a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market’s competitors.*

WithSecure has been recognized in the 2026 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Endpoint Protection³, one of only four European-headquartered vendors included in a report evaluating 13 leading vendors globally. WithSecure’s Chief Technology Officer, Nina Laaksonen, notes:

To us, Being recognized in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Endpoint Protection for the 16th time, reflects something we’ve built deliberately – a European-designed, European-delivered security alternative that mid-sized organizations can genuinely trust.

Nina Laaksonen, Chief Technology Officer at WithSecure

That kind of consistency doesn’t happen by accident. In our view it reflects a sustained commitment to building endpoint security that actually fits how mid-sized organizations operate — not just how large enterprises with dedicated security teams do.

What the Gartner Magic Quadrant actually is

A Gartner Magic Quadrant is a culmination of research in a specific market, giving you a wide-angle view of the relative positions of the market’s competitors.*

The Endpoint Protection category has evolved considerably since it replaced traditional antivirus solutions more than a decade ago. Today’s endpoint protection solutions typically include integrated Endpoint Detection and Response (EDR) functionality — enabling real-time telemetry, detection customization, post-incident investigation, and response. Increasingly, vendors are also integrating endpoint protection with broader workspace security platforms and Threat Detection, Investigation, and Response (TDIR) capabilities, which span XDR, Managed Detection and Response (MDR), Identity Threat Detection and Response (ITDR), and SIEM/SOAR tools.

Why in our opinion this recognition matters for the mid-market and MSPs

Mid-sized organizations are consistently underserved in the cybersecurity market. Most vendor roadmaps, analyst reports, and industry guidance are built around the needs of large enterprises — organizations with dedicated SOC teams, deep budgets, and the headcount to manage complex, multi-vendor security stacks.

WithSecure’s inclusion — as one of only four European-headquartered vendors in the Gartner report — we believe reflects a deliberate focus on building security that works for organizations that don’t have those resources. Advanced capabilities, without the operational overhead that makes enterprise-grade security unmanageable at scale.

We believe that having cybersecurity designed and delivered from Europe matters more than ever by setting the world’s highest bar for data protection and resilience.

Nina Laaksonen, Chief Technology Officer at WithSecure

This is the 16th time WithSecure has mentioned in a Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Endpoint Protection (formerly Endpoint Protection Platforms). WithSecure has been recognized in every report since 2012, and also appeared in 2007 and 2009.

What Gartner says mid-sized organizations should actually do

The report³ notes that “Vendors are increasingly investing in generative and agentic AI to improve product usability, but adoption by security teams remains limited. ” and “This is especially true considering that most midsize organizations do not have mature security operations or exposure management processes, which vendors often aim to optimize or automate with AI assistants. As a result, cybersecurity leaders, especially in less-mature cybersecurity organizations, continue to prioritize MDR services over AI assistants for outcome delivery.”

That’s significant. The cybersecurity industry has spent years telling organizations that more tools equal better protection. The reality — especially for teams without the resources to manage them — is that more tools create more noise, more gaps between systems, and more overhead. The shift toward minimal effective security isn’t a compromise. It’s the smarter approach.

Gartner also projects that “by 2029, 30% of midsize organizations will converge endpoint, data security and identity security capabilities into a workspace security platform, enabling holistic protection and centralized policy management.”(P3 That direction aligns closely with how WithSecure has built Elements XDR.

The role of managed services

For organizations without large in-house security teams, managed services aren’t just a convenience — they’re often the right answer. The report acknowledges that resource-constrained organizations increasingly look to partner- and vendor-delivered services, choosing between outcome-driven Managed Detection and Response (MDR) and co-managed security monitoring options.

WithSecure’s Co-Security Services model is built around exactly this: bringing world-class expertise to organizations that can’t justify — or don’t need — a full internal SOC. That might mean fully managed detection and response, or a co-managed arrangement where WithSecure works alongside an existing team to increase effectiveness without replacing it.

WithSecure also helps Managed Service Providers (MSPs) extend their security offerings with round-the-clock monitoring and response — capabilities that would be prohibitively expensive for most MSPs to build independently.

Exposure management: from reactive to proactive

The report³ notes that endpoint protection also uses attack surface reduction capabilities, such as device control, host firewall management and application control to limit exposure to threats — recognizing that effective security means identifying risk before it’s exploited, not just responding after the fact.

WithSecure has been ahead of this curve. Patch management has been a standard feature of the Elements Endpoint Protection product since 2014, with vulnerability assessment capabilities added in 2015. The launch of Elements Exposure Management in 2024 brought these capabilities together into a unified 360° view of cyber risk — covering managed endpoints, unmanaged devices including IoT, cloud misconfigurations, and identity exposures — all within the Elements Cloud platform.

It’s worth noting that WithSecure has also been recognized in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Exposure Assessment Platforms⁴ — a separate report that published last year.

We believe its emergence reflects the growing recognition that proactive security is no longer optional. Knowing where you’re exposed before an attacker finds it is becoming as important as detecting and responding after the fact. For WithSecure, this recognition confirms that exposure management has matured into a discipline in its own right — not just an XDR add-on.

We also believe that organizations choosing a single security solution that covers both Endpoint Protection and Exposure Assessment are making the more future-proof investment. As these disciplines converge, managing them through separate, disconnected products will create the same complexity and coverage gaps that fragmented security stacks have always created. WithSecure Elements covers both — on a unified platform, under a single management console.

WithSecure recommends complementing it with independent technical evaluations — including AV-TEST, AV-Comparatives, and MITRE ATT&CK® — for a complete picture of how products actually perform under real-world conditions.

Want to see WithSecure Elements XDR in action? Explore the platform or book a call to talk through what the right security stack looks like for your organization.

1 *Gartner Glossary for Magic Quadrant reports. www.gartner.com/en/research/methodologies/magic-quadrants-research
2 WithSecure has been recognized in every report since 2012. Additionally, WithSecure has been recognized in 2007 and 2009, as well.
3 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Endpoint Protection, 26 May 2026, Deepak Mishra, Evgeny Mirolyubov, Nikul Patel.
4 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Exposure Assessment Platforms. Mitchell Schneider, Dhivya Poole, Jonathan Nunez. 10 November 2025.

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