15 Best Cybersecurity M&A Advisors (2026)

Selling a cybersecurity company is not selling software. The buyer is underwriting your detection logic, your research team and your own security posture, and it will send its product organisation to check all three. That changes who should represent you.

ProCloser tracked 96 cybersecurity acquisitions announced in 2026 year to date, and six of them named a sell-side advisor. This guide ranks 15 firms on their cybersecurity record, states what each one publishes and what it does not, and routes you by deal size and sub-sector. Where a firm's claim could not be verified on its own website, the entry says so.

How we verified this list

The credential behind the numbers. ProCloser maintains a public index of technology and software M&A. It held 1,473 acquisitions announced in 2026 year to date at the time of writing, of which 96 were cybersecurity. Every market statistic on this page comes from that index and is 2026 year to date, public announcements only. You can read the underlying deals at the cybersecurity slice of the index.

What we excluded, and why

• Union Square Advisors. A well-regarded technology bank that appears on most competing lists. On August 21, 2026 we found unionsquareadvisors.com resolving to a parking page whose only sitemap entry redirects to a GoDaddy for-sale listing for the domain. We could not verify a live firm site, so we left it off rather than recycle it.
• L40. An M&A advisory firm for founder-led SaaS, technology and AI companies up to $100M ARR, and a firm whose cross-border profile would otherwise suit some security software sellers. It publishes no cybersecurity practice and we found no security transaction we could verify. ProCloser also has a commercial relationship with the firm, so it is excluded rather than ranked.
• Windsor Drake. Every mandate it takes is on the sell side and it is genuinely good at that, but its published focus is fintech and payments founders with enterprise values between $5M and $300M. No cybersecurity practice, so no place on this page. Disclosure: Windsor Drake is a ProCloser client, and it is excluded anyway.
• GP Bullhound. Its published sectors are business software and AI, consumer technology and digital services. Cybersecurity is not among them, and its one security-adjacent 2026 deal was on the buy side for Francisco Partners.
• Hampleton Partners. Lists cybersecurity under "technologies crossing multiple sectors" rather than as one of its seven core sectors. That is honest of them, and it is also a no for this list.
• Corum Group. Forty years old, 500-plus closed transactions, and no cybersecurity coverage area we could find on its site. Its transaction taxonomy carries a generic "Security" tag only.
• Evercore and Morgan Stanley. Both run serious technology practices. Neither names cybersecurity as a coverage area on the pages we could fetch, so they appear in the tier-above section rather than as ranked entries.
• Raymond James. Excluded on process, not on merit. Its site would not load for us on August 21, 2026 across three separate attempts, so we could not verify anything and will not publish unverified claims.

Quick comparison table

Fee models are the market structures these firms use, not published rate cards. No firm on this page publishes its pricing. See the fee section below for the bands to expect and the four clauses that matter more than the headline number.

Which advisor fits my sub-vertical?

Tier A: platform and large-cap sellers, roughly $250M and above

Five firms that can run a process where the buyer is a public company, the consideration includes stock and the diligence involves your source code. Ranked on cybersecurity record, not on balance sheet.

Tier B: the core mid-market, roughly $50M to $500M

This is where most cybersecurity founders sell, and where advisor choice moves the number most. Three of the eight firms below were publicly credited on 2026 cybersecurity sell sides in our index, which is three more than almost anybody else.

Tier C: founder-scale sellers, roughly $10M to $100M

Below $50M the specialist banks thin out fast. These two firms take mandates in the band where most cybersecurity founders sell, and where the advisor's job is more about buyer education than auction dynamics.

What 2026 cybersecurity deals show

Everything in this section comes from the ProCloser deal index: 96 cybersecurity acquisitions announced between January 6 and August 19, 2026. It is 2026 year to date, public announcements only, and it captures technology and software transactions rather than the whole security economy. Deals that were never announced are not in it, which is most of the small ones.

Finding 1: cybersecurity is a strategic-buyer market, not a sponsor market

Of the 96 tracked deals, 43 were bought by a public company and 42 by a private strategic acquirer. Eight were bought by a strategic that is itself private-equity backed. Only three were a direct sponsor platform purchase. That is 88 out of 96 landing with an operating company.

Compare that to the IT services and managed services slice of the same index, where 38 of 159 tracked 2026 deals went to a sponsor or a sponsor-backed buyer. In cyber the equivalent figure is 11 of 96. If your advisor's pitch is built around a private equity auction, ask why, because in cyber the money is coming from product companies that want your technology inside their platform by the next release cycle. That changes the whole shape of a process: fewer bidders, deeper technical diligence, more of the value sitting in retention packages for the engineering team.

Finding 2: the consolidators repeat, and the buyer list has moved down-market

Palo Alto Networks appears three times in the 96, more than any other acquirer: Portkey (April 30), Koi (February 17) and CyberArk, which it announced on February 11 in an SEC exhibit rather than a press release. Seven other acquirers appear twice each: Cribl, Brinqa, Cyera, Zscaler, Databricks, Logicalis US and Valiant Solutions.

Read that second list again. Cribl, Brinqa and Cyera are venture-backed scale-ups, not incumbents, and they are buying. Cyera paid a reported $1B for Oasis Security on July 28 and roughly $50M for Genie Security on May 24. Cribl bought CardinalOps in July at a reported $100M and Radiant Security in August. The set of credible buyers for a $20M to $80M security company in 2026 includes companies that were themselves startups three years ago, and a banker whose buyer list stops at the public incumbents will miss half the room.

Finding 3: almost nobody discloses, and the disclosed numbers lie about the middle

Sixteen of 96 disclosed a price. Those 16 run from about $0.5M to $32B, with a median around $200M. Do not treat $200M as the market midpoint. It is the midpoint of the deals large enough that somebody had a disclosure obligation or a marketing reason to publish. The 80 undisclosed deals are where most founder exits happen, and they are invisible in every league table you will be shown.

The largest disclosed cybersecurity acquisition in the index is Google completing its $32B purchase of Wiz on March 11, 2026. Behind it: ServiceNow and Armis at $7.75B on August 18, Accenture and Dragos at $4.17B on June 19, and Visa and BioCatch at $2.4B on August 3.

Finding 4: 26 of 96 crossed a border, and Israel is the second-largest source of targets

Twenty-six of the 96 tracked deals were cross-border, and eight of those were specifically US to Europe or Europe to US. Where the target's country is recorded, the United States leads with 21 and Israel is second with 10, ahead of the United Kingdom at 7, Canada at 6 and France at 4. If you are an Israeli security vendor, your realistic buyer is American and your advisor needs a US strategic-development network, not a local one.

Three deals worth studying

EfficientIP sold to Francisco Partners, June 16, 2026

Credited sell-side advisors: Arma Partners and IA Global Capital. A French DDI and network security vendor sold to a US technology-focused sponsor. This is one of only three sponsor platform purchases in the whole 96, and it is the only one in the index that names a European tech boutique on the sell side. What it proves: for a European security business selling into the US sponsor universe, the advisor's job is buyer access across an ocean, not local relationships. Announcement.

Valiant Solutions bought BreakPoint Labs and Abile Group, both with Piper Sandler on the sell side

Abile Group closed February 17, 2026 and BreakPoint Labs June 2, 2026. Same buyer, a Bluestone portfolio company, twice inside four months, with the same bank representing the seller both times. Federal cyber services is a roll-up, the roll-up has a named acquirer, and one bank is sitting on the seller side of it. What it proves: in government-facing cyber services, sub-sector relationships beat brand. BreakPoint Labs announcement and Abile Group announcement.

Cyber Advisors sold to Sterling Investment Partners, March 19, 2026

Credited sell-side advisor: Baird. A cybersecurity and IT services provider going to a sponsor as a platform. What it proves: the hybrid MSSP plus managed IT profile gets valued on services economics, and it is the one part of cyber where sponsors still buy platforms. If that is your business, you are being priced off recurring margin and technician utilisation, not off ARR. Announcement.

The honest tier below this band

If your security business does under roughly $10M of enterprise value, most of the firms above will pass on the mandate, and the ones that say yes will staff it badly. Here is what is available to you, named.

Regional business brokers. Our index credits Viking Mergers & Acquisitions on the January 13, 2026 sale of Beyond Secure to NuView, a managed IT and cybersecurity platform. That is a real, closed cybersecurity transaction run by a Southeast US business brokerage. Brokers of this type work on a listing model, price off owner earnings rather than ARR, and generally run a smaller buyer list. For a $3M revenue MSSP with owner-operator economics, that is the correct tool.

Deal marketplaces. Axial, and to a lesser degree BizBuySell at the very small end, will put a confidential profile in front of a wide sponsor and search-fund audience. You are self-serving the process. The tradeoff is that a marketplace creates reach, not tension, and tension is where the price lives.

MSP-specialist brokers. A whole cottage industry now sells managed service providers with a security attachment. They know the buyer set well, they run fast processes and their fee expectations are modest. They are also, in our experience reading these deals, weak on product security valuation, so if a real share of your revenue is your own software rather than resold licences, you are leaving multiple on the table.

The failure mode at this level is not fraud, it is mismatch. A broker prices your recurring revenue like a services book. If your recurring revenue is a product, you want somebody in the tiers above, even if the fee looks uncomfortable next to the broker's.

The honest tier above this band

Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America and Citi all run technology M&A groups that cover security. They are excellent, and for most cybersecurity founders reading this they are the wrong call. Three specific reasons.

Fee thresholds. A bulge-bracket technology group is built to earn seven- and eight-figure fees. A $60M sale does not clear that bar, so either the mandate is declined or it is accepted and then staffed by people three levels below the person who pitched you. The second outcome is worse than the first.

Conflicts you cannot see. These banks lend to, research, underwrite and advise the same strategics that would buy you. That is not an accusation, it is structure. Independent advisory firms exist because some sellers want a representative with nothing else on the table. Evercore built a whole franchise on exactly that pitch, and Qatalyst has never had a balance sheet to conflict with.

Process design. A large bank's default is a broad two-round auction. In cybersecurity, where the real bidder set for a specialist product may be six companies and two of them are competitors you cannot show your customer list to, a broad auction leaks and burns leverage. Momentum Cyber, AGC Partners and Arma Partners all run narrower, more surgical processes because that is what the buyer universe demands.

The exception is genuine. Above roughly $750M of enterprise value, and certainly for any public-company sale, you want a bulge bracket or an elite independent in the chair. Palo Alto Networks acquiring CyberArk in February 2026 is not a mandate for a boutique. Neither was Google and Wiz. If that is your scale, stop reading lists like this one and call three banks.

What cybersecurity businesses trade for in 2026

Two warnings before the table. First, only 16 of the 96 cybersecurity deals we tracked in 2026 disclosed a price, so nobody, including us, has a clean private multiple set for this sector. Second, the ranges below are indicative planning anchors drawn from disclosed transactions, public comparables and our own EBITDA multiples by industry and deal-index valuation benchmarks. They are not appraisals and your business will land where its retention, growth and buyer set put it.

The single largest swing factor is not your category, it is whether your revenue survives the buyer's diligence on net retention. A security product with 95% gross retention and expansion inside the base gets the top of its band. The same product with two customers at 40% of revenue gets the bottom, or an earnout.

What do these advisors charge in 2026?

No firm on this page publishes a rate card, and any page that claims to quote one is guessing. What follows is the structure the market uses and the bands we see quoted to sellers, presented as ranges you should expect to negotiate rather than prices you should expect to be given.

Four things matter more than the headline percentage.

• Whether the monthly payment credits against the close. Most credible firms credit it in full. If yours does not, you are paying twice for the same work.
• Where the tail starts. A tiered scale that steps up on incremental value above a threshold aligns the advisor with the last dollar. A flat percentage does not. Ask for the step-up, and ask for it to start slightly above your realistic base case.
• What counts as consideration. Earnouts, rollover equity and retention pools for your engineers are all negotiable inclusions. In cybersecurity, retention packages are large, so this clause is worth real money.
• The tail period. Twelve months is normal, twenty-four is aggressive, and the buyer list attached to the tail should be a named schedule rather than "any party contacted".

For a fuller treatment of how these structures differ between brokers and advisors, see our guide to business broker and M&A advisor fees.

The frames we use in this guide

Five lenses do most of the work when you are picking a cybersecurity advisor. We named them so you can argue with them.

1. The Disclosure Blind Spot

Rule: the public record covers a fraction of cybersecurity M&A, so any ranking built on it is measuring press releases. Number: 6 of 96 tracked 2026 cybersecurity deals credited a sell-side advisor, and 16 disclosed a price. How to act: ignore public league tables for this sector entirely. Ask each firm, under NDA, for its last five closed cybersecurity mandates including the undisclosed ones, and ask for two seller references you can call.

2. The Strategic Gravity Rule

Rule: cybersecurity value flows to operating companies, not sponsors, so the advisor's product-strategy relationships matter more than its sponsor coverage. Number: 88 of 96 tracked 2026 deals went to a strategic or a strategic-backed buyer; only 3 were a direct sponsor platform purchase. How to act: in the pitch meeting, ask which corporate development leaders at your six most likely acquirers the banker has spoken to this quarter. Vague answers are the answer.

3. The Scale-Up Buyer Shift

Rule: the credible acquirer list now includes venture-backed companies that were startups three years ago, and most buyer lists have not caught up. Number: Cribl, Brinqa and Cyera each made two acquisitions in our 2026 index, matching or beating most public incumbents. How to act: when you review a draft buyer list, count how many names raised a round in the last 24 months. If the answer is zero, the list is stale.

4. The Sub-Sector Tell

Rule: cybersecurity is not one market, and the right advisor for identity security is rarely the right advisor for federal cyber services. Number: our 2026 index splits roughly into 21 identity-adjacent deals, 15 in managed security, 14 in exposure and offensive security and 14 in GRC. How to act: make each firm name three closed deals inside your exact sub-sector. Adjacent is not the same.

5. The Retention Discount

Rule: in security, the buyer is underwriting your engineering team as much as your product, so anything that threatens key-person continuity is priced as risk. How to act: before you go to market, fix the two structural things buyers always find. Get your research and detection leads onto retention agreements, and get customer contracts assignable without consent. Both are cheap now and expensive in diligence.

How to verify an advisor is legit and unconflicted

Do this before the second meeting. It takes twenty minutes.

1. Check FINRA BrokerCheck. Search the firm name at brokercheck.finra.org. You are looking for the broker-dealer entity, its CRD number, its registration status and any disclosure events. Arma Partners, for example, states on its own site that US Arma Partners LP is a FINRA member and links to BrokerCheck. Firms that are proud of the record link to it.
2. Understand who is not registered, and why that can be fine. Since the SEC's M&A broker exemption under Section 15(b)(13) took effect, some legitimate advisory firms operate without broker-dealer registration on qualifying private-company sales. That is a lawful structure, not a red flag, but you should ask the firm to state plainly which structure it uses and, if unregistered, how it handles any securities consideration in your deal.
3. Ask who signs your engagement. The entity on the agreement should be the entity you diligenced. Some groups pitch under a brand and contract through a different licensed entity.
4. Ask for the conflicts list in writing. Specifically: does the firm have a buy-side relationship with any name on your draft buyer list, does it hold equity in any competitor, and has it represented any likely acquirer in the last two years.
5. Call two references you chose. Not the two the firm offers. Ask for the full client list in your sub-sector from the last three years and pick from it.
6. Check who runs the deal day to day. Get the names of the day-to-day team in the engagement letter. In cybersecurity this matters more than usual, because the technical narrative is written by the deal team and reviewed by the buyer's product organisation.

The traps in a "best cybersecurity advisor" list

Including, where it applies, this one.

• Pay-to-play rankings. Several of the pages ranking for this query are directories that charge for placement or run on affiliate arrangements. Check whether the page discloses. If there is no disclosure line, assume there is something to disclose.
• League tables that measure the wrong thing. Global deal value ranks banks by the size of transactions they touch anywhere, which sorts for balance sheet, not for cybersecurity competence at your scale.
• Stale entries. Firms merge, get bought and shut down. We removed one well-known technology bank from our own draft of this list after finding its domain parked for sale, and a recycled list will carry a dead firm for years.
• Sector claims with no closes behind them. A "cybersecurity" tab on a website costs nothing. A named, dated, closed cybersecurity transaction is the only evidence that matters.
• Counting our own credit correctly. ProCloser tracks deals; we do not advise on them, and we are not neutral about our own matching service. Read the disclosure at the bottom of this page and weigh everything here accordingly.

Where ProCloser fits

Two sentences of scope, so you know what you are reading. ProCloser is not an M&A advisor, does not run sale processes and does not take a success fee on any transaction. We maintain a public index of technology and software M&A, which is where every number on this page comes from, and we operate a matching service that introduces sellers to advisory firms, some of which appear above.

That last clause is a conflict and you should treat it as one. Read the disclosure at the bottom. Then do the diligence in the verification section yourself, because the only opinion that should decide your mandate is the one you formed after calling references.

The bottom line

The routing rule, one more time, because it is the only part of this page you need to remember.

Under $10M of enterprise value: a regional broker or an MSP-focused specialist. Viking Mergers & Acquisitions closed a cybersecurity sale in our 2026 index, so the tier is real, and a full sell-side bank will not take the mandate anyway.

$10M to $75M: Solganick & Co. for services and software hybrids, Capstone Partners for services roll-ins, Woodside Capital Partners for venture-backed security product. This is the band where advisor choice moves the outcome most, because your buyer set is knowable and small and somebody has to know it.

$75M to $500M: Momentum Cyber first, then AGC Partners, Drake Star and Arma Partners for European sellers. Piper Sandler and Baird if your business is a services or federal profile. This is the specialists' band.

$500M and up: Qatalyst Partners, Jefferies, Houlihan Lokey and the bulge brackets. Above roughly $750M the specialisation argument stops winning and execution capability starts.

Cut across all of that with one test. Whoever you hire has to name three closed cybersecurity transactions in your sub-sector, and give you sellers to call. Six of the 96 cybersecurity deals we tracked in 2026 named an advisor publicly, so you are not going to find that record on a website. Ask for it under NDA.

Related resources

• Best M&A advisors for AI companies. The 15 firms with a verifiable record on AI and applied-AI software deals.
• Best fintech M&A advisors. 15 firms across payments, banking software, insurtech and wealthtech.
• Most active M&A advisors in tech (2026 league table). Every advisory firm publicly credited on a tracked 2026 tech deal, with the sample size stated.
• Cybersecurity M&A deals, 2026. The live index behind this page: every tracked cybersecurity acquisition with buyer, date and source link.
• The ProCloser deal index. All 1,473 technology and software acquisitions we tracked in 2026 year to date, updated daily.
• Deal index insights. What the tracked data shows about buyer behaviour, advisor credit and deal cadence.
• Most active acquirers, 2026. Ranked buyers across the whole index, which is how you find out whether your likely acquirer is in a buying phase.
• Valuation benchmarks. Disclosed deal values by sector and quarter, plus the size distribution and stated multiples.
• EBITDA multiples by industry. Use this for the managed security and consulting end of cyber, where the pricing is EBITDA-based rather than ARR-based.
• Best M&A advisors for SaaS and technology. The broader software ranking, useful if security is only part of what you sell.
• Best investment banks for $20M to $200M software exits. Deal-size-matched shortlist for the band most security founders land in.
• Best cross-border tech M&A advisors, US and Europe. Relevant to the 26 of 96 cybersecurity deals that crossed a border in 2026.
• Best boutique M&A advisory firms. How boutiques differ from banks on staffing, fees and process design.
• Best sell-side M&A advisory firms. Sell-side specialists across sectors, with the conflict question treated properly.
• Best M&A advisors for mid-market SaaS. Overlaps heavily with the security product tier above.
• Business broker and M&A advisor fees. Fee structures explained, including tail clauses and what counts as consideration.
• Due diligence checklist for selling a business. Start this six months before you engage anyone.
• Get matched to an advisor. Tell us the sub-sector and band and we will shortlist firms with closes in it.

Frequently asked questions

I run an MDR business doing $12M ARR with 40% of revenue from one MSP channel partner. Which advisor should I call first?

Call a services-literate mid-market firm before you call a product bank. At $12M ARR with that concentration profile, your realistic buyer set is other managed security providers, IT services roll-ups and the sponsors behind them, which is the buyer universe Solganick and Capstone Partners work in daily. Baird belongs on the list too, because it was the credited sell-side advisor when Cyber Advisors, a cybersecurity and IT services provider, sold to Sterling Investment Partners in March 2026. Before any of them, deal with the concentration. One partner at 40% of revenue is the single biggest discount you are carrying, and no banker can talk a buyer out of it during diligence. Buyers will model the loss of that partner and price the downside. Spend two quarters diversifying, or at minimum get that relationship onto a multi-year contract with assignment rights and a termination notice period measured in quarters, not weeks. If you cannot fix it before you go to market, expect the structure to absorb the risk instead: a portion of consideration in an earnout tied to that partner's revenue holding for 12 to 24 months post-close. That is not a failure, it is the honest price of the risk. What you should refuse is a process that pretends the concentration is not there, because the buyer finds it in week three of diligence and the renegotiation happens from a much weaker position than if you had priced it in from the start.

My identity security startup has $6M ARR growing 90% a year. Everyone tells me to wait. Should I?

Probably, but not for the reason you are being given. The usual advice is to wait for scale. The better question is whether waiting improves your position in the buyer's roadmap. Identity is the most contested category in our 2026 index; 21 of the 96 cybersecurity acquisitions we tracked touched identity, access or non-human identity. That means buyers are actively filling gaps now, and a gap that is open today may be closed by an acquisition next quarter, after which you are a competitor rather than a fill. So the calculus is not "more ARR equals more money", it is "will the two or three companies who need what I have still need it in 18 months". At $6M ARR growing 90%, you are already inside the band where a strategic will pay for the technology and the team. Palo Alto Networks acquired Portkey in April 2026 and Koi in February. Okta bought Permiso Security in July at a reported $200M. SailPoint bought Entro in June at a reported $200M. None of those were large revenue businesses. Get a conversation started with an advisor now, understand your realistic range, and make the wait a decision rather than a default. If the answer comes back that two buyers are already circling the category, waiting is expensive.

We are a 60-person GRC software company at $9M ARR with flat growth. Is anyone buying?

Yes, but you will be priced as a renewal book, not as a growth asset. GRC and compliance software accounted for roughly 14 of the 96 cybersecurity deals in our 2026 index, which is real volume, and the buyers tend to be platform consolidators adding a module rather than sponsors underwriting growth. Flat growth at $9M ARR with sticky renewals is a legitimate acquisition target for that buyer type. What it is not is a competitive auction, and you should be sceptical of any advisor who promises one. Your value drivers are gross retention, the depth of the framework coverage you have built and how much of your revenue renews without a sales conversation. Fix your reporting on those three before you go out. On the advisor question: at this size a specialist software boutique will serve you better than a broad mid-market bank, because the pitch has to be about the asset's durability and the cost the buyer avoids by not building it. Realistic outcome is a mid-single-digit ARR multiple with a meaningful part of consideration tied to retention. If you want the upper end, the lever is not growth spend, it is proving that the renewal base is contractual and assignable.

Is Momentum Cyber genuinely better than a big bank, or is that just marketing?

For most cybersecurity sellers under $500M, the specialisation is real and it matters. Momentum Cyber's site describes it as the only investment banking firm focused exclusively on the cybersecurity sector, with over 200 years of collective cybersecurity experience across its senior team and a track record it puts at 50 or more closed cybersecurity deals. It publishes the CYBERscape market map and a cybersecurity almanac, and it runs its own tracking platform. Those are the artefacts of a firm that lives in one sector rather than covering it. The practical benefit is not the research, it is the buyer list. A firm that tracks thousands of cybersecurity companies knows which product gaps are open at which acquirer right now, and that determines who gets the call and how the story is framed. The honest counterweight: a single-sector firm has a smaller balance sheet, no equity capital markets alternative if a sale stalls and, by definition, fewer relationships outside security. If your business is half cybersecurity and half something else, that focus becomes a limitation. And above roughly $750M of enterprise value, the bulge brackets and elite independents bring cross-border execution and public-company machinery that a specialist boutique does not.

I got an unsolicited offer of $45M from a strategic. Do I still need an advisor?

Yes, and this is the situation where an advisor pays for itself most reliably. An unsolicited offer tells you one buyer wants you at a price they set. It tells you nothing about the market. The entire job of a sell-side process is converting one bidder into three, and the presence of a credible second bidder is worth far more than any negotiating tactic. There is a second, less discussed reason. A pre-emptive offer usually arrives with a short exclusivity demand attached, and once you are in exclusivity your leverage is gone. Sophisticated acquirers know this. They are not being unfair, they are being good at their job. An advisor's first move is almost always to decline exclusivity and run a compressed process, six to ten weeks rather than six months, against a targeted list. On a $45M offer, moving the headline number by 15 percent pays for a full sell-side mandate several times over, and that is before you count the terms below the headline: escrow size, earnout construction, working capital peg and the retention pool that gets carved out of your consideration rather than the buyer's. Founders routinely give away more in those clauses than in the price. One caveat: if the offer is genuinely strategic and time-sensitive, say a competitive process the buyer is running internally, tell the advisor that up front so the process is designed around it.

How long does a cybersecurity sale take from engagement to close?

Five to nine months for a normal process, and cybersecurity sits at the longer end of that band. Preparation and materials take four to eight weeks, and in security it is usually longer because the technical narrative has to survive review by the buyer's product and research teams, not just its finance team. Outreach and first-round indications run six to ten weeks. Management meetings and negotiating a letter of intent add four to six weeks. Confirmatory diligence through to close is eight to fourteen weeks. Two things extend cybersecurity timelines specifically. First, security diligence on a security company is unusually deep; expect code review, an examination of your own security posture and questions about any incident in your history. Second, if you sell into government or regulated industries, contract novation and clearance transfers add time that nobody can compress. Deals with a foreign acquirer and US federal customers can add a regulatory review on top. Plan for nine months, and start the preparation work three to six months before you plan to engage anyone, because the fixes that raise your price the most are the ones that need time: retention agreements, assignable contracts and clean audited or reviewed financials.

Should I use a cybersecurity specialist or my existing corporate finance relationship?

Specialist, unless your existing relationship has closed security deals. The test is not whether the firm is good, it is whether the firm can name three closed cybersecurity transactions in your specific sub-sector. Generalist mid-market banks price security companies off the frameworks they know, which usually means EBITDA and comparable services businesses. That is correct for an MSSP and badly wrong for a product company with 85% gross margins and expansion revenue. The reverse mistake is also common: a product-focused technology bank running a managed security services sale as if it were software, promising an ARR multiple the buyer universe will never pay. There is one legitimate reason to keep your existing relationship in the room. If that firm has been advising you for years and knows your board, your cap table and your shareholders' actual objectives, that context has value. The usual resolution is to run the process with a specialist and keep the incumbent involved in a defined, smaller role. What you should not do is award the mandate on relationship alone and then discover in month four that the banker has no idea who runs corporate development at your three most likely acquirers.

We are an Israeli security vendor with $15M ARR. Do we need a US bank?

You need US buyer access, which is not quite the same thing. Israel is the second-largest source of cybersecurity targets in our 2026 index, with 10 of the 96 tracked deals, behind only the United States at 21. Almost all of those targets were bought by American acquirers. So the requirement is a firm whose corporate development relationships are in Santa Clara, Austin and Boston, whoever holds the passport. In practice that points you at either a US technology bank with real security coverage or a specialist with a US network, and it usually rules out a purely local advisor. There are structural items to handle early. Get your intellectual property ownership documented cleanly, particularly anything developed under Israel Innovation Authority grants, because grant repayment and technology transfer restrictions surprise buyers late and cost time. Get employment agreements and assignment of inventions in order for every engineer. If you sell to US federal or defence customers, expect regulatory review to add months. On process design, a narrow list of six to ten genuine strategic acquirers usually beats a broad auction, because at $15M ARR you are being bought for a capability and the number of companies that need that specific capability is small.

Only 6 of your 96 tracked deals named an advisor. Why should I trust any ranking built on that?

You should not, and we did not build one. That is the point of publishing the number. Six of 96 tracked 2026 cybersecurity acquisitions publicly credited a sell-side advisor, and 16 disclosed a price, so the public record covers a small and non-random slice of what happened. Non-random matters more than small: deals get publicised when a buyer wants a market signal or a regulator requires it, which biases the visible set toward large, strategic and public-company transactions. Any ranking assembled from those credits would be a ranking of press-release policy. So this list is built on what firms document about their own practice, which sub-sectors they name, which deals they publish, what deal-size band they say they work in and where their partners came from, cross-referenced against the deals we can see. That is a weaker method than a real league table and we would rather say so than dress it up. It also tells you how to run your own diligence. Ask each firm, under NDA, for its last five closed cybersecurity mandates including the ones that never made the press, with seller references attached. The firms with a genuine record will hand it over.

My cyber consulting firm bills $8M a year with 25 consultants. Is that even sellable?

Sellable, yes. Valuable in the way you are hoping, probably not. A people-based cyber consulting business at $8M of revenue is bought for its client relationships, its certifications and its consultants, all three of which can walk. Expect a mid-single-digit multiple of EBITDA rather than anything resembling a software multiple, and expect a significant portion of the consideration to be contingent on you staying and on revenue holding. The buyers are IT services consolidators, MSSPs building a professional services arm and the occasional sponsor-backed platform. Our 2026 index shows that market is active: Logicalis US made two acquisitions, and Valiant Solutions bought two federal cyber services businesses, both with Piper Sandler credited on the sell side. What raises your number: recurring or repeatable engagements rather than project work, documented methodology that survives the departure of any individual, cleared or certified staff if you serve government, and a second-tier leadership team that clients already know. What lowers it: your name on the door, a top client above 25% of revenue and consultants without non-solicits. Fix what you can in the 12 months before you go out. This is the segment where preparation moves the number most.

What is a realistic multiple for a $25M ARR cloud security platform in 2026?

Somewhere between 6x and 15x ARR, and the spread is not noise, it is the whole negotiation. The high end of that band belongs to companies with strong net revenue retention, a category the buyer has publicly said it needs and at least two credible acquirers in the room. The low end belongs to companies with flat expansion, a crowded category and one interested party. Our 2026 index does not settle this for you, because only 16 of 96 cybersecurity deals disclosed a price, and the ones that did skew large. What the index does show is the ceiling and where it comes from: Google completed its $32B acquisition of Wiz in March 2026, and Cyera agreed to buy Oasis Security for a reported $1B in July. Both were bought for category position, not for current revenue. Practically, three things move you within the band. Net revenue retention above 115% is worth several turns on its own. Being one of the two or three named options in your category is worth more than growth rate. And the shape of the buyer set matters, because a category where four platforms all have the same gap creates a real auction, while a category with one logical buyer creates a negotiation. Get a specialist to map that buyer set before you anchor on any number, including ours.

Should I sell to a private equity firm or a strategic acquirer?

In cybersecurity the question mostly answers itself, because the sponsors are not there in volume. Of the 96 cybersecurity acquisitions we tracked in 2026, only three were a direct private equity platform purchase and eight more went to a sponsor-backed strategic. Eighty-eight of 96 landed with an operating company. Compare that to the IT services slice of the same index, where 38 of 159 tracked deals went to a sponsor or a sponsor-backed buyer, against 11 of 96 in cyber. So if you run a security product business, plan for a strategic outcome and treat sponsor interest as a useful pricing floor rather than the expected result. If you run managed security or cyber services, the sponsor path is genuinely open and often better, because a platform sponsor will pay for a business it can build on and will let you keep running it. The tradeoffs are the familiar ones. A strategic pays more for capability, integrates your product and typically ends your independence within a year. A sponsor pays for cash flow, keeps the brand and gives you a second bite through rollover equity, but loads the balance sheet with debt and expects a defined exit in four to six years. Decide which outcome you want before the process starts, because the buyer list gets built around that answer.

Sources

Every firm fact on this page was taken from a page we fetched on August 21, 2026. Firm names are in plain text in the body; the verification links are here.

Firm sources

• Momentum Cyber: the firm, team, contact and headquarters, homepage counters
• Qatalyst Partners: about, team, homepage transaction stats
• Houlihan Lokey: about us, newsroom releases on the cybersecurity practice launch and coverage expansion
• Arma Partners: homepage, sector list, partner list and regulatory footer
• Jefferies: sector expertise, founding date
• AGC Partners: homepage, about
• Piper Sandler: technology, technology banking leadership announcement
• Woodside Capital Partners: sector expertise, homepage and offices
• Drake Star: software and SaaS sector page, history, homepage counters
• Robert W. Baird: technology services, history timeline
• Lincoln International: technology, about us
• Canaccord Genuity: technology sector, our history
• Stifel: technology coverage, firm history
• Solganick & Co.: about, homepage and research index, cybersecurity sector
• Capstone Partners: Covail transaction, cybersecurity team recognition release, about

Excluded firms, verification sources

• Union Square Advisors: sitemap and the /lander redirect to a GoDaddy for-sale listing, checked August 21, 2026
• Windsor Drake: homepage, published focus on fintech and payments founders
• GP Bullhound: homepage sector list
• Hampleton Partners: sector list
• Corum Group: about

Deal sources cited on this page

• ProCloser deal index, cybersecurity slice, 96 acquisitions announced January 2 to August 19, 2026
• ProCloser deal index, 1,473 technology and software acquisitions, 2026 year to date
• Google completes its acquisition of Wiz: announcement, March 11, 2026
• ServiceNow and Armis: coverage, August 18, 2026
• Accenture and Dragos: coverage, June 19, 2026
• Visa and BioCatch: coverage, August 3, 2026
• Palo Alto Networks and CyberArk: SEC exhibit, February 11, 2026
• Cyera and Oasis Security: coverage, July 28, 2026
• Okta and Permiso Security: coverage, July 30, 2026
• SailPoint and Entro: announcement, June 15, 2026
• Cribl and CardinalOps: announcement, July 14, 2026
• EfficientIP and Francisco Partners, advisors credited: announcement, June 16, 2026
• BreakPoint Labs and Valiant Solutions, advisor credited: announcement, June 2, 2026
• Abile Group and Valiant Solutions, advisor credited: announcement, February 17, 2026
• Cyber Advisors and Sterling Investment Partners, advisor credited: announcement, March 19, 2026
• Qoria and Aura, advisors credited: announcement, February 2, 2026
• Beyond Secure and NuView, advisor credited: announcement, January 13, 2026