Mid-market consolidation, explosive MDR growth and regional AI divergence signal a structural shift in how organisations buy and operate security in 2026

London, 18 th February 2026 - According to global market intelligence firm CONTEXT, the security analytics market is undergoing a structural reset. Agentic AI, identity-first detection and decoupled architectures are reshaping SIEM investment priorities across EMEA and accelerating change globally.

At the centre of this shift are AI agents capable of independently planning and executing investigations, removing long-standing triage bottlenecks inside SOCs and shifting human analysts towards governance and oversight.

“Agentic AI is changing the economics of SOC operations”, said Joe Turner, Global Director of Research at CONTEXT. “Across our extensive EMEA distribution data and our global coverage spanning EMEA, META, APJ and LATAM, we are already seeing vendors reposition their SIEM portfolios around automation, identity telemetry and data context.”

“Agentic AI can dramatically improve response speed, but without guardrails it also increases the blast radius of mistakes”, said Bharat Mistry, Field CTO at TrendAI, a business unit of Trend Micro. Organisations must apply the same scrutiny to AI agents as they would to privileged human administrators.”

Mid-Market Driving SIEM Growth

CONTEXT analysis shows Europe SIEM revenues up +4%, with the 501–1000 seat segment surging +288%. In META, SIEM is growing faster at +14%, with the same mid-market segment up +241%.

The driver is consistent across both regions: large mid-market organisations are consolidating onto unified platforms to meet compliance requirements, but are not large enough to sustain fully staffed 24/7 SOCs. Growth continues strongly in Middle East, Turkey and Africa (META), while Europe is showing early signs of moderation.

MDR Outpaces as SMBs Buy the Outcome

Managed Detection and Response continues to outperform. Europe is up +18.9%, with under-500 seat organisations growing +30%. In META, MDR is surging +55%, and +199% in the under-500 segment. Rather than investing in complex platforms they cannot run internally, SMBs are choosing to buy the outcome through MDR.

Agentic AI: A Global Story with Regional Nuance

CONTEXT’s global coverage highlights clear regional contrasts:

● META: High confidence in national cyber preparedness, particularly across MENA, is
accelerating agentic AI adoption. Saudi Arabia and the UAE are positioning themselves
as hubs for advanced autonomous AI transformation in 2026.
● Europe: Strong regulatory and trust frameworks create opportunities for sovereign AI
and specialised agentic solutions aligned to strict EU standards. However, with the EU
AI Act becoming applicable in August 2026 and CSA2 frameworks evolving, compliance
complexity may slow deployment.
● APJ: Adoption rates of AI agents are among the highest globally. However, rapid
implementation is driving shadow AI risks and exposing gaps in traditional identity and
permission models as agent-to-agent interactions increase.
● LATAM: AI-enabled security platforms are seen as a way to leapfrog legacy
infrastructure, particularly in banking and e-commerce. Yet the region faces the widest
cybersecurity skills gap and the lowest confidence in national cyber preparedness.

“Agentic AI is fundamentally reshaping the SIEM Market”, said Frank Vitagliano, CEO of the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC). “The market intelligence by CONTEXT highlights a move towards AI-driven detection and automation in the global cybersecurity market. This level of visibility is essential for decision makers, who are looking to understand where security investment is heading.”

Through its strategic collaboration with the GTDC, CONTEXT strengthens the global standardisation and comparability of IT distribution data, delivering intelligence that reflects how the security market is evolving across regions.

“Agentic automation is redefining the SIEM market in a very real way”, said Nidal Othman, CEO, StarLink, an Infinigate Group company and member of the CONTEXT distribution panel in the Middle East and Africa. “Looking at these trends in the CONTEXT data, we continue to empower partners across MEA to lead this shift with secure, outcome-driven Agentic AI solutions that reduce complexity, eliminate friction, and drive smarter business operations. As a leader in the digital landscape, our vision is to walk this journey alongside our partners and support them as a Trusted AI-driven digital platform enabler.”

About CONTEXT
CONTEXT is a B Corp certified provider of market intelligence and analytics for the global technology industry. The company works with leading manufacturers, distributors and investors to support strategic decision-making through advanced forecasting, analytics and data management. CONTEXT systems track more than £200 billion in annual technology sales transactions, supported by a global team of over 400 professionals operating in more than 35 countries.

Press contact
Funda Cizgenakad
T: +44 7876 616 246
E: Funda@contextworld.com

About the GTDC
About the Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC)
The Global Technology Distribution Council (GTDC) is the industry consortium representing the world’s leading technology distributors. The GTDC provides market intelligence, thought leadership and strategic engagement to support the IT channel ecosystem. Through collaboration with technology vendors, distributors and research partners, the GTDC delivers high-quality data and insights that promote transparency, drive growth and strengthen the global technology supply chain.

About StarLink
StarLink, an Infinigate Group company is acclaimed as the fastest growing “True” Value-added Distributor across the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa regions with on-the-ground presence in 11 countries. StarLink is recognized as a "Trusted Cyber and Cloud Advisor” to over 3500 plus enterprise and government customers that use one or more of StarLink’s best-of-breed and market- leading technologies, sold through its Channel network of over 1500 Partners. The StarLink Solution Lifecycle helps Channel Partners differentiate offerings, and assists customers to identify key risks and define priorities for addressing their IT Security gaps and enhance their Data Center and Cloud infrastructure. 

About TrendAI™ 
TrendAI™, a global AI security leader, makes the world a safer place to exchange digital information. Leveraging human expertise and artificial intelligence, TrendAI™ protects over 500,000 enterprises and millions of individuals across AI, cloud, networks, endpoints, and devices. At the core is TrendAI Vision One™, the industry-leading AI security platform that centralizes cyber risk exposure management and security operations, delivering robust layered protection across on-premises, hybrid, and multi-cloud environments. The platform is fueled by world-class threat intelligence and insights that protect organizations from hundreds of millions of threats every day. With 6,000 TrendAI™ experts across 75 countries, TrendAI™ empowers security leaders to stay ahead of threats, driving proactive security outcomes across the entire attack surface. This includes critical environments like AWS, Google, Microsoft, and NVIDIA. AI Fearlessly.