Russian Aggression Shines Spotlight on Cybersecurity Stocks: 4 Top Goldman Sachs Picks to Buy

Every year or so, we see headlines of some major hack of a government, corporate or social media site in which the data of tens of thousands of people is compromised and exposed to cybersecurity thieves. While these attacks generally are resolved swiftly, this time it may be different. With the specter of war present, and the tide not going as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin may have desired, he may decide to use cyberattacks not only against Ukraine but also against western nations aligning against Russia.
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Just last week the Department of Homeland Security warned of the potential for attacks and noted that U.S. organizations at all levels could face cyber threats stemming from “the potential for the Russian government to consider escalating its destabilizing actions” beyond Ukraine.

With the world uniting against the Russian aggression in Ukraine, you can bet that it is entirely possible that a disgruntled Putin lashes out and turns loose a legion of hackers against western nations. We screened the Goldman Sachs research database looking for the top cybersecurity stocks that have with a Buy rating and found four top picks at the firm that look like very solid ideas for aggressive growth stock investors now. Remember that no single analyst call should ever be used as a basis to buy or sell a stock.
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Fortinet

This stock has done well but still offers a reasonably attractive entry point. Fortinet Inc. (NASDAQ: FTNT | FTNT Price Prediction) provides broad, integrated and automated cybersecurity solutions in the Americas, Europe, Africa and elsewhere.

The company’s products and services include FortiGate hardware and software licenses that provide various security and networking functions, including firewall, intrusion prevention, anti-malware, virtual private network, application control, web filtering, anti-spam and wide area network acceleration. The FortiManager product family provides central and scalable management solution for its FortiGate products.
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The company also offers the FortiSwitch product family, which offers secure switching solutions for connecting customers their end devices. The FortiAP product family provides secure wireless networking solutions, while the FortiExtender is a hardware appliance and the FortiAnalyzer product family offers centralized network logging, analyzing and reporting solutions.
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Additional offerings include the following:

• The FortiWeb product family provides web application firewall solutions
• The FortiMail product family offers secure email gateway solutions.
• FortiSandbox technology delivers proactive detection and mitigation services.
• FortiClient provides endpoint protection with pattern-based anti-malware, behavior-based exploit protection, web-filtering and an application firewall.
• The FortiToken and FortiAuthenticator product families offer multi-factor authentication to safeguard systems, assets and data.
• FortiEDR/XDR is an endpoint protection solution that provides both comprehensive machine-learning anti-malware execution and real-time post-infection protection.

The company provides security subscription, technical support, professional and training services.

Goldman Sachs has a $362 price target for Fortinet stock, and the analysts’ consensus target is $363.20. The stock closed 6% higher on Monday to $344.52 a share.
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Okta

While probably not a household name, this company could be a target of private equity. Okta Inc. (NASDAQ: OKTA) is an independent provider of identity for the enterprise. Its Okta Identity Cloud platform provides identity management solutions that enable customers to secure their users and connect them to technology and applications. It also connects enterprises to their customers, employees, contractors and partners.

The products allow users to access a range of cloud applications, websites, mobile applications and services from various devices. Its platform is used by information technology (IT) organizations to secure their enterprise and by developers to build customer-facing websites and applications.
Okta Identity Cloud consists of a suite of products to manage and secure identities. It offers a range of products, such as Adaptive Multi-Factor Authentication, Universal Directory, Lifecycle Management products, Single Sign-On, application program interface (API) Access Management and Mobility Management.

The $258 Goldman Sachs price target compares with the higher consensus target of $271.13. OKTA stock closed on Monday at $182.84, up 3% for the day.
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Palo Alto Networks

This continues to be one of the most dominant players in the industry. Palo Alto Networks Inc. (NASDAQ: PANW) is helping to lead a new era in cybersecurity by protecting thousands of enterprise, government and service provider networks from cyber threats.

Unlike fragmented legacy products, the company’s security platform safely enables business operations and delivers protection based on what matters most in today’s dynamic computing environments: applications, users and content.

The Palo Alto Networks security platform has features that were introduced that help security professionals overcome the distractions and time spent on problems caused by the overwhelming volume of alerts and manual processes associated with operating many discrete security products, and, instead, expand breach prevention capabilities and boost operational efficiency.
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The company posted solid results last week, and Goldman Sachs noted this:

Another quarter of solid execution as the company remains a consolidator in its markets. Palo Alto Networks delivered another quarter of solid, clean results as it continues to consolidate market share while optimizing its platform. Product revenue in the fiscal second quarter of 2022 grew over 20% year-over-year, NGS annual recurring revenue grew 70% year over year and total billings grew 32% year-over-year.

The Goldman Sachs price target is $650, which is higher than the consensus target on Palo Alto Networks stock of $620.58. The shares closed over 4% higher on Monday to $594.25.

This company may hold the best value for investors at current trading levels. Tenable Holdings (NASDAQ: TENB) provides cyber exposure solutions in the Americas, Europe, the Middle East and elsewhere. The company’s platforms include Tenable.io, a cloud-delivered software as a service, and Tenable.sc, an on-premises solution.
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Tenable’s platforms provides organizations with a risk-based view of traditional and modern attack surfaces to deliver a complete and continuous view of assets, associated vulnerabilities, internal and regulatory compliance violations, misconfigurations and other cybersecurity issues, as well as prioritizes these issues for remediation based on risk assessment and predictive analytics and provides insightful remediation guidance.

The company also offers Tenable.ot, an on-premises solution that provides threat detection and mitigation, asset tracking, vulnerability management and configuration control capabilities to protect OT environments, including industrial networks. In addition, it provides Nessus Professional, a vulnerability assessment solution for identifying security vulnerabilities, configuration issues and malware. Its Nessus Essentials includes vulnerability and configuration assessment for a limited number of assets.
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After the company posted very solid results early in February, Goldman Sachs said this:

Tenable delivered its third quarter in a row of accelerating revenue and current billings growth. Revenue and CCB for the fourth quarter beat consensus estimates (FactSet) with initial guidance for both metrics over fiscal year 2022 consensus as well. In addition to strong execution, Log4J accelerated demand in the quarter, and we expect the vulnerability will remain a meaningful tailwind. The company saw strong customer growth along with healthy traction across its platform and expansion of asset coverage within its installed base to drive better net retention rates. Tenable added 562 new enterprise platform customers, a record add for a single quarter. Healthy large enterprise transactions led to 100 net new six-figure customers, up from 66 in the fourth quarter of 2020.

The price objective on Tenable stock at Goldman Sachs is $66. The consensus target is $66.36, and Monday’s closing print of $55.36 represented a 6% gain for the day.
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Of course, investors are well aware of Putin’s threats and the ongoing issues associated with the attack on Ukraine. The need for tech security across enterprise platforms for business and government entities is and will remain enormous. While the war between Russia and Ukraine eventually will be resolved one way or another, the need for intense cybersecurity protection will only increase in the years and decades to come.