CRN’s annual radar has been a useful guide for channel and product teams who need to separate genuine momentum from noise. As of Jan 24, 2025, CRN’s 2025 roundup was still taking shape, but the market signals from late 2024 point to a handful of startups you should be tracking now.
Why this matters now Cybersecurity budgets and buying criteria are shifting fast toward AI-powered detection, autonomous SecOps, and platform approaches that protect data and identities across cloud, SaaS and agentic workflows. Vendors that closed meaningful funding or strategic partnerships in 2024 are the likeliest to show up on any 2025 “hottest” list because capital and channel traction let them scale pilots into production.
Cyera — data security, big momentum Cyera doubled down on DSPM plus DLP and closed a landmark funding round at the end of 2024. If you care about protecting data that fuels AI workflows, Cyera’s product direction and the funding to accelerate it make them a top candidate for CRN’s 2025 highlights. Practical take: evaluate their DSPM+DLP workflows against your cloud and SaaS crown-jewels and measure time to meaningful classification.
Island — rethinking the last mile: the enterprise browser Island’s enterprise browser approach attracted major growth capital in 2024 and has the classic startup cocktail that scales well in the channel: clear ROI story for security plus easy deployment model for end users. For organizations trying to reduce data leakage and manage SaaS/BYOD risks, Island is worth a pilot to validate policy enforcement at the browser layer rather than bolting complex controls onto existing stacks.
Abnormal Security — email remains ground zero for social engineering Abnormal’s 2024 growth and funding rounds underscored that email remains an attractive attack vector and that behavioral AI is a high-value defense. For channel teams and SOCs, Abnormal is a practical play when you need rapid reduction in BEC and targeted phishing exposure. Validate their platform against known attack patterns in your customer base and measure mean time to remove malicious messages.
Torq — autonomous SecOps and hyperautomation Torq closed a sizable Series C in 2024 and pushed agentic AI into operational workflows, which translates into faster triage and more automation across SOC tasks. If your SOC is overloaded, Torq’s hyperautomation approach can be a force multiplier, but treat it like any automation project: pick a limited set of high-value playbooks, run a controlled pilot, and instrument rollback and human-in-the-loop escalation.
Endor Labs — securing the software and AI code supply chain Endor Labs attracted strategic investment from Citi Ventures during 2024 and has been positioning itself to reduce developer friction while improving supply chain visibility. As developers increasingly consume open source and AI-generated code, tools that provide reachability analysis and low-friction remediation are practical investments. For product teams, integrate supply-chain checks into CI workflows and prioritize fixes by exploitability and runtime reachability.
How to use a CRN-style shortlist in procurement 1) Start with pilots that show measurable risk reduction in 60 to 90 days. 2) Require partner enablement and services offers up front so you can scale across customers without repeating work. 3) Assess telemetry portability so a successful pilot yields reusable signals for other customers. Many of the startups likely to land on CRN’s 2025 list already sell through or integrate with channel partners; treat partner traction as a proxy for deployability.
Bottom line Expect CRN’s 2025 “hottest startups” coverage to call out vendors that combined product momentum with partner-friendly go-to-market motion in 2024. The names above are practical starting points for trials today because they closed the sorts of funding, partnerships and product milestones that let pilots turn into repeatable deployments. If you want, I can convert this preview into an evaluation checklist you can use to run 30- to 90-day pilots with any of these vendors.