This is a cybersecurity vendor's "100% threat coverage" diagram.

And the following is the actual threat landscape.…

One is a perfect blue circle, smooth and confident. The other looks like a wires behind your TV — tangled, confusing, and nothing like the picture on the box.

Somewhere between these two images is the feeling I can't shake: Why does it always seem like what vendors say and what actually happens drift further apart every year?

Three Characters Everyone Has Met

To make sense of it, I picture three characters. Not real people — but if you work in cybersecurity, you've seen versions of them.

1. The Visibility Guru

This one joins a call with a blazer over a T-shirt that says something like Zero Trust. He's confident and wastes no time to tell you:

"Your current stack doesn't address this emerging class of adversaries. Their TTPs have evolved. What you need is deeper visibility."

Then comes the chart. Red spikes. Dangerous-looking slopes. One labeled: "97% increase in lateral movement behaviors — observed across our customer base."

And I always pause — internally — and think:

Observed by whom? Collected how? Compared to what baseline? And why am I supposed to take your number as objective truth?

Because here's the uncomfortable reality:

Vendors produce the data, interpret the data, publish the data… …and then sell us tools based on the data.

It's like a chocolate company releasing a report saying: "Daily dessert is essential — according to our internal study."

2. The AI Prophet

This one speaks entirely in buzzwords.

"Our platform identifies never-before-seen threats." "We interpret intent-based behaviors." "We perform autonomous remediation in real time."

Intent-based according to what? How does a machine "interpret"? And what exactly is being remediated autonomously — my problems or my entire network?

They'll cite a real statistic to sound grounded, like: "According to the 2024 Verizon DBIR, 74% of breaches involved the human element."

True enough.

But then comes the punchline: "And that's why you need AI that predicts human error before it happens."

This is how magic tricks work — you start with something real, then slide into something impossible and hope the audience doesn't notice the moment it became fiction.

3. The Threat-Intel Oracle

This one always has a report.

A shiny, heavily designed PDF with angular charts and intimidating colors.

"Threat groups are accelerating breakout times across all sectors."

CrowdStrike's breakout-time metric is solid and widely referenced — but by the time it passes through several layers of product marketing, nuance melts away.

Now the Oracle says:

"Attackers go from initial access to domain admin in seven minutes. Your current tools can't keep up. But ours can."

And suddenly the meeting isn't about cybersecurity posture. It's about survival. It's about fear.

In cybersecurity, fear isn't an emotion. It's a currency.

Fear moves budgets. Fear sells platforms. Fear makes you feel irresponsible for hesitating.

The Data Problem Nobody Talks About

Here's the uncomfortable truth beneath all this: Most of the numbers we see in cybersecurity come from… vendors.

Vendors collect the telemetry.

Vendors decide how to label it.

Vendors decide which parts are "threats."

Vendors write the report that shapes public perception.

Then vendors sell solutions to the problems they just defined.

Imagine if restaurants produced official reports on national hunger levels and concluded: "People should definitely eat more — ideally at our restaurant."

This is what happens when the group selling the solution controls the story that creates demand for the solution.

Yes, there are independent sources like OSINT, CISA advisories — but the majority of "observed threats" originate from private-company datasets that nobody else can audit.

So when a vendor says: "We discovered a never-before-seen threat actor."

…it could mean:

a brand new actor

a renamed actor

or simply "We saw something weird and gave it a dramatic name"

It's like three neighbors giving different names to the same cat going through their trash.

The Pyramid of Vendor Narratives

Let me show you something simple.

Level 1: The Honest Vendor

They say: "Here's what we do well. Here's what we don't do."

They exist. They deserve awards.

Level 2: The Fear Vendor

They say: "You need this because attackers do this. And you need that because attackers might do that."

Fear creeps in. Budgets stretch.

Level 3: The Reality Architect

These are the big ones. They don't just sell tools. They shape the worldview.

They define:

what "visibility" means

how serious threats are

which adversaries matter

what "coverage" should look like

how quickly attacks happen

which behaviors count as risky

They publish the data that defines the battlefield and then sell you the weapons to fight on that battlefield.

That's not cybersecurity. That's constructing a reality and monetizing it.

So, What Can You Do?

The answer doesn't require fancy tools. Just simple habits.

1. Ask for methodology, not just charts.

If a vendor can't explain the math behind a number, the number is decoration.

2. Validate with independent sources.

Cross-check vendor claims with: ENISA Threat Landscape, CISA publications, MITRE knowledge base, etc.

3. Run your own tests.

Bring in a red team. Hire an external assessor. Reality is the best lie detector.

4. Prefer the vendor who admits limitations.

If someone says: "We don't cover that."

…you've just met a rare species in cybersecurity: the honest salesperson.

5. Remember: threats are specific.

Your organization's risk is not the vendor's business model.

The Ending That Refuses to Leave My Mind

One day it hit me: Cybersecurity vendors often talk like they're showing us the map of a dangerous place.

"Here's where the bad guys are. Here's where the danger is. Here's what you need to stay safe."

But they're not map makers. They're people trying to sell you equipment for a journey. So they draw the danger in a way that makes their product the hero.

Some of those dangers are real. Some are stretched. Some are drawn bigger than they need to be.

And all this time, we've been navigating with maps we didn't draw.

So the real question isn't: "Which tool do I need to buy?"

It's: "Which part of this map is real — and which parts were designed to make me buy something?"