Four Signs You Need to Consolidate Your Tech Stack

Last updated at Fri, 11 Aug 2023 14:15:21 GMT

Recently, Gartner surveyed security professionals and found that over 50% of the respondents were looking to consolidate their security tech stack. Why? These professionals recognized that security vendor consolidation is key to achieving their goals of improving productivity, visibility, and reporting as well as bridging staff resourcing gaps.

Additionally, threat actors are leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning tools to launch more sophisticated, high-impact attacks. Defending against AI-assisted attacks requires greater network visibility and operational efficiency—not to mention the automated detection and response capabilities in most consolidation offerings. As the threat landscape evolves, streamlining your tech stack can also improve your organization’s security posture and protect against financial losses. This is an important consideration, as the cost of the average data breach has reached $9.44 million in the U.S.  

While the benefits of consolidation are clear, organizations often miss the tell-tale signs that it is time to consolidate their tech stack. Recognizing these signs can help your organization identify the areas where it’s most needed and develop a seamless implementation strategy that minimizes disruption.

Four tell-tale signs it’s time to consolidate your security tools

Sign #1: You can’t track (or visualize) your tech stack

When was the last time you cataloged your resources? This may seem a little on the nose, but one of the best ways to tell if your organization is in need of consolidation is that you’re unable to track or visualize your tech stack.

In 2021, IBM found that 45% of security teams used more than 20 tools when investigating and responding to a cybersecurity incident. These tools are a drain on your budget and can even present security risks. Excess tech is less likely to be monitored for compliance and needlessly broadens your network’s attack surface.

Visibility into your tech stack is just as important as visibility across your network. The inability to track and visualize your tech stack can indicate that your organization is working with tools that are obsolete, underutilized, or ignored.

Sign #2: Your mean time to resolve (MTTR) is high

Did you know it takes the average company a staggering 277 days to identify and contain a breach? Finding and resolving breaches quickly is key to protecting your systems and data. When your MTTR is high, it’s indicative of operational inefficiencies in your security responses.

Working with too many vendors and tools can make it difficult to prioritize and respond to threats. For example, if you’re working with redundant tools, event data from one tool may conflict with another, and your team is forced to spend precious time confirming which dataset is correct before it can respond to the security incident.

Siloed tools from a variety of vendors are another common pain point. Even if you’re using “best of breed” tools, a cobbled together security solution of multiple vendors can create issues. Tools from different vendors may not integrate well (if at all). Consequently, your team may be missing crucial alerts and experiencing a breakdown in workflows as data is transferred from one tool to another.

Sign #3: Your processes are manual

If your team is wasting valuable time manually investigating false positives, prioritizing risks, and drawing context from massive datasets, consolidation could be the solution. Manual investigation is also error-prone, and teams often find that important security events are missed entirely or slip through the cracks until they become pervasive, system-wide concerns. As a result, you may be able to track your team’s elevated MTTR rate back to manual resolution workflows.

Consolidated security platforms offer the crucial automation features that companies need to close skill and staffing resource gaps, as well. Consolidating with automation in mind can simplify and improve your team’s workflows, ensuring that your team is able to respond to threats faster and reduce overall risk across your infrastructure—even if your organization is understaffed. Finally, removing the burden of manual investigation can increase your team’s productivity, free up resources, and create space for senior staff to work on other projects.

Sign #4: Compliance is a struggle

If you’re working with a variety of vendors and security tools, compliance can be problematic. You may find that each vendor’s approach to compliance varies widely, and it’s nearly impossible to impose a consistent standard of compliance across your entire network.

Network applications are difficult to update and secure if your organization struggles to maintain visibility in its tech stack. Also, gathering data across your infrastructure for compliance audits is complicated when you have redundant tools, disagreement between the datasets, and no single source of truth.

Whether your organization is in a highly regulated industry or not, maintaining a compliant network is important. Organizations that maintain compliant networks can resolve configuration-related vulnerabilities faster, creating a baseline for security practices and IT operations.

Following governmental compliance regulations can help your organization enhance its data management capabilities. There are also serious drawbacks to a non-compliant network. Depending on your industry, if your network is non-compliant, you may be required to pay hefty fines. Additionally, non-compliant networks are less secure; they’re prone to configuration vulnerabilities and a host of other issues.

When it comes to consolidation, don’t ignore the signs

Knowing the signs of a tech stack in need of consolidation can save your organization a considerable amount of time, money, and frustration. Some companies worry about giving up “best of breed” security options. However, consolidation is increasingly considered more secure than “best of breed.”

For many organizations, the security advantage of narrowing your attack surface, automating processes, and streamlining data far outweighs the individual benefits of separate solutions and multiple vendors. As the threat landscape evolves, it's increasingly important to have a streamlined tech stack that can deliver the security support needed to effectively mitigate risk.

Want to learn more about consolidation and where to get started? Check out our eBook, “The Case for Security Vendor Consolidation.”

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