Buy 4 Cybersecurity Bigwigs for a Strong and Secure Portfolio in 2026

Source Domain: finance.yahoo.com

The cybersecurity space focuses on companies that offer integrated protection against evolving security threats while simplifying IT security infrastructure. Companies in this space provide solutions to safeguard applications, networks and cloud computing environments.

The widespread adoption of artificial intelligence (AI), IoT devices, and increased digitization across both public and private sectors has heightened vulnerabilities and expanded attack surfaces, necessitating the development of advanced security solutions. Cybersecurity providers ensure robust defenses against cyberattacks.

We recommend four cybersecurity stocks for 2026 to strengthen your portfolio. These are: F5 Inc. FFIV, Cisco Systems Inc. CSCO, Datadog Inc. DDOG and Palantir Technologies Inc. PLTR. Each of our picks currently carries a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy). You can see the complete list of today’s Zacks #1 Rank (Strong Buy) stocks here.

The chart below shows the price performance of our four picks year to date.

Zacks Investment Research

Image Source: Zacks Investment Research

F5 Inc.

F5 is gaining traction from strong software growth, backed by a solid uptick in public cloud and security offerings. FFIV is benefiting from the growing demand for application security across multi-cloud environments. Acceleration in BIG-IP and NGINX subscription software deals is an upside.

FFIV is incorporating more automation and orchestration in its platforms to enable quicker application provisioning. F5 is uniquely positioned in the application networking market due to its strong presence in Layer 4-7 content switching, critical for managing the increasing capacity and security demands of modern applications.

F5 has an expected revenue and earnings growth rate of 7.7% and 4.1%, respectively, for the current year (ending September 2026). The Zacks Consensus Estimate for the current year’s earnings has improved 3.4% over the last 30 days.