Reducing Tools – The Power of a Single Platform Approach

In recent years, news of record-breaking cyber breaches has become ubiquitous in today's media coverage. These news stories usually include terrifying statistics about how dangerous modern cyberattacks are and how careless organizations not investing in up-to-date security postures are being. As a result, plenty of state-of-the-art resources and products are available to combat these terrifying cybercriminal titans. At first, this may seem like good news, but excessive options may leave organizational leadership confused, misinformed, and ultimately limited in choosing the optimal solution. This plethora of selections will also likely result in organizations overpaying for adequate cybersecurity. With that said, what is the answer? Tool reduction is the transition to an autonomous, single platform that meets all the cybersecurity challenges in a world where increasingly complex and dangerous cyber threats are changing how we protect our business assets. This blog will discuss single-platform cybersecurity solutions and the advantages of a streamlined, standalone cybersecurity system.

As discussed, there are endless security tools and services today, each offering unique value and advantages to a threat detection and prevention program. With so many options, most security teams blend multiple solutions into one when developing their network security system. In a 2020 survey, Gartner found that 78% of CISOs have 16 or more tools in their cybersecurity vendor portfolio, while 12% have 46 or more. Gartner has called this cybersecurity platform development strategy a "fusion of confusion," as it further complicates an already highly complex task, causes massive overpayment for services, and makes solution management much more difficult.

An alternative solution to solution consolidation that is currently gaining momentum is adopting the vendor consolidation movement. This strategy focuses on developing a platform that collects threat reconnaissance data into one scalable location and normalizes it for detection and investigations using an in-depth monitoring approach. In other words, consolidating cybersecurity vendors into one platform vastly simplifies security teams' day-to-day operations. Gartner research suggests that by 2025, 75% of large organizations will actively pursue a vendor consolidation strategy, up threefold from 2023. In addition to operational simplification, vendor consolidation offers more tangible advantages over multivendor system counterparts, which we will now discuss.

Improved Security:

By using a single platform, coordination, and communication among security components is far simpler and less convoluted than dealing with products from multiple vendors. Therefore, a single platform solution allows a more cohesive and comprehensive security strategy that can identify and respond to cyber threats faster and more effectively.

Enhanced Visibility:

When using a single platform, generating a comprehensive assessment of the organization's network perimeter and security postures is far simpler than when operating with multiple vendors. This modified approach provides valuable insight for ongoing security planning and strategy and allows security teams to analyze their systems in place more efficiently.

Simplified Management:

Managing multiple security vendors and solutions can be complex and time-consuming. Consolidating vendors into a single platform can streamline management and reduce the need for various interfaces, saving time and resources.

Cost Effectiveness:

When security teams consolidate vendors, configuration, maintenance, and integration processes are much simpler and require far less labor and resources, which results in a significant reduction in costs.

Improved Compliance:

When security teams use resources from multiple vendors, component synchronization and compatibility can be highly complicated and multifaceted, resulting in unnecessary stress and work efforts. Compliance is far less pressing with a single platform, simplifying management and maintenance.

Organizations that adopt the tool reduction transition will undoubtedly experience tremendous improvements to their existing cyber threat defense systems. The change, however, will unlikely be the simplest one nor the quickest one. Gartner's research suggests that transitioning from multiple vendor platforms to a single vendor platform could take more than five years. Despite these challenges, organizations seeking this transition must know that help is available. UltraRed is a leading cybersecurity solutions provider looking to help organizations with their cyber threat defense needs. If you and your team are considering transitioning to a single-vendor platform solution, contact UltraRed here to request a demo and speak to an industry expert.