There Is No Anti-Ransomware Market …and that might be mostly true

I read Richard Stiennon’s piece on why there is no anti-ransomware market, and I largely agree with the starting point.

There is no market for a magical, standalone product that promises ransomware simply won’t happen. We’ve all seen enough of those claims to know how that ends.

Where I think the discussion gets more interesting is what buyers actually mean when they say they want to “stop ransomware”.

The problem is the label, not the intent

Most security leaders aren’t buying absolutes. They’re buying a reduction in impact.

Ransomware isn’t just another malware category. It’s a very specific failure mode where a few seconds of uninterrupted access can cause irreversible damage. Detection that works eventually isn’t good enough if it works too late.

That creates a narrow, well-defined defensive need, regardless of what we call it.

This shows up in real buying behaviour

After a serious incident, organisations don’t rip out their stack and start over. EDR stays. Backups stay. IR stays.

What changes is the question boards start asking:

“How do we stop this specific thing from happening again?”

I’d say it’s not a search for a silver bullet but a search for a missing control.

Where tools like Agger fit

Agger isn’t trying to be a platform or replace anything already in place. It’s designed to do one thing very well: interrupt destructive encryption early enough that recovery isn’t the only option left.

That’s achieved through deception and local behavioural detection, not signatures or cloud lookups. It’s intentionally narrow by design.

You could argue that it isn't an “anti-ransomware market” at all. It’s a market for containment, blast-radius reduction, and damage prevention.

I’d be comfortable with that framing.

So where I land

I agree there’s no appetite for hype, absolutes, or standalone promises. Buyers have moved past that.

But I do think there is sustained demand for focused controls that assume compromise and aim to limit the worst outcomes.

The market may not like the term “anti-ransomware”.

It does, however, care deeply about stopping encryption before it’s too late.