Can you have too many security tools?

A member of your organization’s security team reads about a new kind of security tool and brings it to the CISO’s attention, who decides that it’s a good investment. The CISO sees a new kind of security threat that requires a different security tool. A colleague recommends a security tool she says is indispensable.

Before you know it, your IT organization is managing dozens or even hundreds of security tools with overlapping functionalities and tenuous integrations.

It’s not uncommon today, for example, for enterprises to embrace a wide array of tools — from cloud-native application protection platform (CNAPP), endpoint detection and response (EDR), extended detection and response (XDR), and next-generation firewall (NGFW) to security information and event management (SIEM), security service edge (SSE), and vulnerability/exposure management, in addition to multiple tools for data, mobile, cloud, and network security.

According to IDC’s North American Tools/Vendors Consolidation Survey (November 2023), organizations plan to add even more security tools to their arsenals over time. 

It’s simple fact that threats are evolving and changing, requiring enterprises to pivot quickly in how they protect their organizations and respond to threats. But are more security tools always the answer?

The short answer is “no.”

Cost, frustration, and security issues

Having dozens or hundreds of security tools with overlapping functionality creates more than just confusion. These issues, detailed in IDC’s Tackling Tool Sprawl (March 2024), include:

• IT staff productivity losses: The more tools there are, the less time is dedicated to fully and properly using each one. Switching between tools and trying to correlate results is also more complicated. This complexity not only impacts IT service integrity but can undercut staff contribution, satisfaction, and retention.
• Alert fatigue: More tools mean more alerts, often for the same incident or issue.
• Difficulty in maintaining consistent security controls and configurations: Security tool sprawl makes integrations challenging, and without effective integration, information sharing among systems can fail.
• Unnecessary costs: Every tool requires a subscription or upfront cost along with maintenance and upgrades, integrations, and training. These are typically charged on a per-tool basis, so overlapping tools create unnecessary expenditures. Having multiple subscriptions to the same tool spread throughout an organization also removes the benefit of negotiated packaged deals that can save companies money.
• Security issues: Tools often communicate and work together, sharing data, credentials, and secrets. If they aren’t integrated securely, they can cause myriad issues. In addition, data silos created by different tools can lead to less efficient processes and can slow incident response times.

Fixing this problem requires discovering every security tool in use because missing even one security tool during discovery can cause major security problems. There is no single tool or method for ensuring that all security tools will be identified, so IDC recommends doubling or tripling up on discovery.

Tools that can help with security tool discovery include:

• Software asset management (SAM) tools, which identify software in the environment. It’s a valuable tool and can be helpful in later stages of managing tool sprawl by addressing issues around software management and control, but SAM tools don’t always identify tools that were purchased outright or acquired by other means.
• SaaS application management tools, which identify all SaaS apps purchased and used by the organization. They can also identify redundant applications or licenses.
• Network detection and response (NDR) technology, which creates profiles of all devices that it monitors on the network. Often, NDR vendors will have a dashboard/reporting function that can be used to create an asset inventory.

After identifying all security tools in the environment, the next step is pinpointing gaps and overlaps. One way to do that is through security tool rationalization, which evaluates the functionality, effectiveness, and value of an organization’s security toolset with the goal of optimizing it. Many organizations rely on a security tool rationalization framework to help organize and standardize the process. Others hire an outside specialist.

The final step is consolidation. This is where it pays to use the recommendations that resulted from the security tool rationalization exercise. Depending on the situation, this could mean retiring, replacing, integrating, or simply retaining tools. This is typically done on a case-by-case basis.

The North American Tools/Vendors Consolidation Survey showed that nearly half of organizations are looking to consolidate threat intelligence; security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR); NDR; and XDR in some way. The research also found that getting security tools under control through consolidation and other methods can save an average of about 16% of total tool costs and nearly 20% of analyst time.

Consolidation also is critical to improving organizational security; according to the same survey, it is expected to reduce mean time to respond (MTTR) by an average of nearly 21% and decrease remediation time by 19.5%. Nearly 60% of organizations began consolidation efforts in 2023.

It’s important to note that this process of evaluating and consolidating security tools should be ongoing. There will always be new threats and new tools designed to thwart those threats. Every tool should go through an architectural review and pass through a central authority, and rationalization assessments should be conducted periodically to keep things in check.

Learn more about IDC’s research for technology leaders.

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Karen D. Schwartz is an adjunct research advisor with IDC’s IT Executive Programs (IEP), focusing on IT business, digital business, disaster recovery, and data management. She has extensive experience both as a researcher and a business and technology journalist, covering a broad range of issues and topics. She often writes about cybersecurity, disaster recovery, storage, unified communications, and wireless technology. Karen holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from UCLA.