Close to 380 vendors competed for attention across three days at Infosec Europe 2026. If you were there, you felt the difference immediately. The caution that defined the market in 2024 and much of 2025 has given way to something more decisive. Organisations that spent two years evaluating new capabilities have started deploying them. Companies are committing to European hiring rather than simply showing up to maintain presence.
Four members of the Altura Partners team were at the conference, either on the floor or tracking the market in real time. What follows is a summary of what we observed. The full report, Signal Over Noise, goes deeper into each of these themes and includes individual perspectives from our contributors.
The AI paradox on the conference floor
AI was everywhere at Infosec Europe 2026. Every booth, every pitch, every agenda item eventually led back to it. Which is precisely why it has stopped working as a differentiator. When every vendor claims to be AI-powered, the claim becomes noise.
The conversations that stood out had moved past the label entirely. The real frontier is agentic AI: autonomous systems that investigate alerts, prioritise vulnerabilities, and operate with minimal human supervision. Security leaders are no longer asking whether AI will be used in the security operations centre. They are asking how much autonomy they are comfortable giving it, and how to manage the risks that come with that.
One vendor stood out specifically by doing the opposite. Filigran, a French cybersecurity company, built their OpenCTI platform on an open-source, community-built model. No AI-powered headline, no assumed familiarity. They made a complex category feel approachable. Being human, open, and not scary is becoming a credible counter-position in a market full of AI maximalism.
The funding is back. The talent is not.
Cybersecurity startups raised approximately $14 billion in 2025, the strongest year since 2021, with early-stage rounds accounting for 63% of all deals. Europe is also back in a meaningful way: companies that used to turn up to Infosec to maintain visibility are now genuinely committing to regional headcount and leadership.
But the talent pipeline has not kept pace with the capital. The 2025 ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study found that almost nine in ten security professionals saw their organisation suffer a significant incident tied to a skills gap in the past year. Budget, not headcount, is now the primary blocker: a third of organisations name it as the main barrier to building their security team. And the shortage is increasingly one of capability rather than volume. Cloud security skills are now required in 95% of cybersecurity roles, yet fewer than half of practitioners hold a relevant cloud certification. Many CISOs are turning to AI not because they want to, but because they cannot hire enough skilled practitioners. That is not a temporary gap. It is structural, and it is reshaping how forward-thinking organisations approach their next hire.
What organisations are actually hiring for right now
Across three days of conversations, the hiring demand was consistent. SDRs and founding account executives sit at the top of the list. Senior demand generation and growth marketing are rising fast. Product marketing is building momentum. Leadership layers are returning after years of individual contributors reporting directly into US-based boards: VP of Sales and CRO hires are back, with companies now thinking about structure and scale rather than just immediate revenue.
The founding AE profile remains the hardest to fill. Series A and B vendors are not looking for a traditional sales hire. They need someone with deep technical understanding, a direct network of CISOs they can call, and the ability to cover AE, sales engineering, and customer success functions until the team around them catches up. The profile is specific, and the competition for it is intense.
One pattern worth flagging: companies consistently hire a founding AE first, without the BDR support, pipeline infrastructure, or marketing function behind them, then struggle to understand why the investment is not converting. A Rolodex is not a sales engine. Structure should come before the senior hire.
The full report covers more ground
Signal Over Noise draws on observations from four Altura Partners contributors, each bringing a different vantage point from the Infosec Europe 2026 floor. The full report includes a section on trust and attention as the scarce assets in 2026, what the shift away from AI-generated content means for vendors, the changing role of the modern CISO, and individual takeaways from each contributor.
If you work in or around cybersecurity go to market, it is worth reading.