Imagine an emergency in your home requiring immediate assistance. If you had to call separate numbers for fire, police, or medical services, precious time would be lost searching for the correct contact. Fortunately, a consolidated emergency service number simplifies this process, making it easier for those in need and facilitating efficient auditing, archiving, and tracing of operator actions. Consolidating these services under a single contact number streamlines both reporting and response.  

The Need to Consolidate Cybersecurity 

Cybersecurity teams face a comparable challenge when managing multiple security screens and tools. Just as a single emergency number, streamlines response efforts, unifying security dashboards and interfaces into a single, coherent system can significantly enhance efficiency. This consolidation allows IT professionals to quickly identify, and address security issues, reduces the likelihood of errors, and ensures a more comprehensive view of the organization’s security posture. 

The proliferation of cyberattacks over the past decade has led to a surge in cybersecurity tools. While it may seem logical to acquire numerous best-of-breed solutions, this approach can be counterproductive. Just as clustering too many wireless access points causes interference and performance issues, an excess of cybersecurity tools can lead to complexity and inefficiency not to mention alert fatigue as cybersecurity teams must sort through waves of alerts and logs and discern what is relevant from various screens. 

Many cybersecurity tools lack seamless integration due to differing formats and protocols. This incompatibility forces cybersecurity personnel to switch between multiple management screens, wasting valuable time and potentially overlooking critical information. The resulting fragmentation can create blind spots in an organization’s security posture, potentially leaving vulnerabilities unaddressed. 

Companies Recognizing Value of Tool Consolidation 

While vendor consolidation has been evident in the SIEM industry and other areas of cybersecurity, a broader consolidation effort is also taking place among companies in general. A 2022 Gartner survey revealed that 75% of organizations are pursuing security vendor consolidation, with 65% of these organizations doing so to improve their risk posture. The survey found that 57% of organizations are working with fewer than 10 vendors to meet their security needs. Many of these organizations aim to further optimize by reducing the number of vendors in key areas such as Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) and Extended Detection and Response (XDR). A similar study by ESG Research back in 2019 showed that two-thirds of organizations were undergoing security vendor consolidation.  

Consolidation Does Not Mean Abandonment 

Tool consolidation does not mean abandoning all your tools. It is about strategically optimizing your toolset to improve efficiency and effectiveness. This process begins with a selective reduction, where existing tools are evaluated and eliminated for redundancy or underutilization. Consider the analogy of personal home security. Using an ad hoc approach to purchase security tools such as cameras, motion detectors, and alarms would likely result in overlapping capabilities and require multiple management interfaces. Similarly, in cybersecurity, the goal is to integrate multiple functionalities into fewer, more comprehensive platforms rather than eliminating everything. 

It’s crucial to recognize that some existing tools are critical and may have irreplaceable functionality. Consolidation means streamlining your security stack while preserving essential capabilities. This approach allows for better integration, improved visibility, and more efficient management of your security infrastructure, ultimately leading to a stronger overall security posture. 

How MDR Aids Consolidation 

Managed Detection and Response (MDR) can effectively consolidate cybersecurity tools by integrating various security functions into a unified platform. Modern MDR solutions offer centralized monitoring and robust logging capabilities, aggregating and analyzing security events from multiple sources across diverse platforms. This consolidation provides IT teams with a comprehensive view of the organization’s security landscape. 

Modern MDR platforms consolidate multiple services including threat detection, incident response, and continuous monitoring within a single package. This approach not only enhances operational efficiency but also improves the accuracy of threat identification and response. By adopting MDR, organizations can streamline their cybersecurity infrastructure, reduce complexity, and ensure more effective protection against evolving cyber threats.  

Consolidated Expansion 

By using MDR to consolidate your security tools and interfaces, you might even obtain expanded security coverage. That may sound like an oxymoron, but because MDR solutions perform around-the-clock monitoring of your complete IT estate, you can expand your security coverage, particularly during off-hours when in-house teams may not be active. The persistent surveillance provided by MDR solutions expands your team’s threat hunting capabilities. It allows for continuous monitoring and analysis of security events across your network, cloud environments, and endpoints. This comprehensive approach ensures that potential threats are identified and addressed promptly, regardless of when they occur. 

Possible Lower Costs 

While cost savings should not be the primary objective of security tool consolidation, it can indeed yield financial benefits in the long run. These savings may not always manifest in immediate reductions of purchase or licensing costs, but rather through improved operational efficiencies such as: 

• Reduced training costs as there are fewer tools to master and manage. 

• Lower maintenance overhead as fewer tools mean less time spent on updates, patches and general maintenance. 

• Optimized staffing as consolidation may allow for a more versatile IT and security team as the need for specialists dedicated to designated tools is reduced. 

Expanded Expertise 

Using an MDR provider to consolidate your security tools can significantly broaden your access to expertise. For example, large-scale MDR solutions like CYREBRO aggregate vast amounts of data from numerous sources into a single data lake. This approach is analogous to having access to threat intelligence from your entire community, enhancing your own protection. 

Moreover, MDR providers offer the advantage of experienced personnel who have encountered a wide range of security scenarios. Their collective knowledge and exposure to diverse threats across multiple clients provide a depth of expertise that would be challenging for most individual organizations to develop internally. 

Conclusion 

Security tool consolidation is not about sacrificing capabilities, but rather optimizing your existing resources to enhance overall security. A skilled craftsman doesn’t need every tool available, just the right ones for the job. Similarly, securing your enterprise requires the right set of security solutions. These tools should work in an integrated fashion to optimize their effectiveness and your overall security posture. This approach ensures that you have a streamlined, efficient, and powerful security infrastructure capable of addressing modern cyber threats without unnecessary complexity or redundancy.