5 Reasons to Consolidate Your Tech Stack

The news surrounding the slowing economy has many wondering how
much of an impact it will have on their businesses – and lives. And
there’s good reason to start preparing.

A recent survey by McKinsey & Company found that 85% of small
and midsize businesses plan to increase their security spending
heading into 2023, while Gartner recently projected that 2022 IT
spending will only grow by 3%, down from a 10% growth rate the year
before.

We’re already seeing businesses making cuts and freezing
budgets. And smaller organizations that already have limited
budgets are more vulnerable than ever. While we are still dealing
with the unknown, one thing is clear: even as the economy
slows down, security threats don’t.

But there’s hope.

A new eBook^[1]
illuminates how one solution can not only help increase security
operations efficiency but also provide economic safeguards for
security teams that are already strapped for cash.

What is the solution? Consolidation.

If you’re evaluating your security strategy and budget for the
coming year, here are five reasons why consolidating your security
technology stack can help you ensure your organization is safe – no
matter what comes our way in 2023.

1 — Be better prepared for economic uncertainty

Smaller organizations that may not have the same cash reserves
as their larger counterparts can withstand economic uncertainty by
optimizing their security stacks to be cost-effective while still
addressing today’s sophisticated threats. Replacing multiple
vendors and platforms with a consolidated solution that offers the
same (or better) capabilities not only reduces direct vendor costs,
but also reduces ongoing vendor management and solution maintenance
costs.

2 — Improve your security posture

A recent Gartner survey^[2]
found that 75% of organizations are pursuing security vendor
consolidation in 2022, up from 29% in 2020.

But not necessarily for the reason you’d expect – 65% of orgs
consolidate to improve risk posture. According to Gartner,
“Cybersecurity leaders and their teams are frustrated with the
operational inefficiencies and the lack of integration of a
heterogenous security stack.” Frustrated is probably an
understatement here.

And an ESG survey^[3]
found that the top reasons to consolidate security vendors were to
improve operational efficiencies (65%), gain tighter integration of
security controls (60%), and improve threat detection (51%).

The key to protection is not more solutions. It’s better
solutions that can provide an expanded set of protections on a
fully integrated platform.

3 — Reduce complexity

Products that natively bring security controls together within a
single platform enable tighter, more efficient control over
operations unlike buying multiple tools that are cobbled together
and operated separately.

Consolidation also provides the benefit of streamlining your
vendor management, which is helpful if you need to chase down a
software issue or it’s time for contract renewals.

A natively integrated solution saves the time and cost of
integration while also ensuring data fidelity. Simplified
operations and management also result in better decision-making and
faster time-to-remediation.

The benefits don’t stop there. Having broad coverage of areas
and capabilities makes it easier to deliver impactful executive
reports and communicate to the C-suite and board the progress,
impact, and value of your cybersecurity program.

4 — Offset staffing shortages

While large orgs are fully staffed to operate a broad portfolio
of security tools, smaller teams have to take a “lean and mean”
approach.

But that doesn’t need to come at the cost of security.

Partnering with vendors that enable efficient, streamlined
operations while addressing advanced threats means that even lean
and mean security teams can implement effective protection for
their orgs.

Not only does this save the time and cost of integration, but it
also reduces the need to find people with specialized skills to
manage multiple, overly complex tools.

5 — Optimize your security spend

An obvious result of vendor consolidation is helping to control
costs, and orgs are already realizing this benefit.

A July 2022 survey by ESG found that smaller organizations
purchase from fewer vendors^[4]: 82% of orgs with fewer
than 500 employees buy products from 10 or fewer security vendors,
while 50% of organizations with 500-999 employees do the same.

Tools that offer integrated security controls can deliver more
capabilities without adding more vendors – optimizing overall
spending.

As a bonus, you’ll reduce your maintenance and overhead as you
spend less time updating multiple products and dealing with
separate procurement processes.

Want to learn more about how consolidation can benefit
your org? Check out Cynet’s eBook, How security consolidation helps
small security teams.^[5]