In modern organizations, security leaders are expected to know their technology stack by heart; what tools they have, their utilization and how they interconnect. This impacts the data available for analysis, driving what can be done to improve prioritization.
In this context, complexity and sprawl are the enemy of efficiency, putting the spotlight on keeping things simple and leveraging what is already deployed to balance cybersecurity resilience and protection with demonstrating optimal ROI.
It's not uncommon to see 75 to 100 cybersecurity tools deployed in an average mature enterprise. How many of them are effective? How many are useless at best, and simply a cost centre and a management headache at worst?
Incidents that should have been prevented by an existing control can be particularly frustrating, yet remain common - 79% of security leaders shared this sentiment last year (source: Panaseer) - making regular and, more importantly, hands-on, crisis response practice exercises all the more important.
In this article, we explore a recent Case Study of one of ORNA's customers to drive home the idea that your current cybersecurity toolkit may be good enough.
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Case Study Context
Our customer is a 3,500-employee company that specializes in acquiring, managing, and growing industry-specific software companies worldwide. With operations in over a dozen countries, covering over 40+ vertical markets, and managing over a hundred subsidiary organizations, the company is tasked with complex software procurement and cybersecurity management across a vast and diverse portfolio.
Customer's Challenges
The company faced significant challenges in its software procurement and cybersecurity functions, typical for its complexity and size:
Balancing Budget Pressures with Security Needs. The customer's C-suite applied increasing pressure to control escalating cybersecurity budgets, without compromising the integrity of their infrastructure or leaving their subsidiary organizations vulnerable.
Justifying Essential Cybersecurity Investments. The company experienced delays in justifying essential technology and security purchases needed to safeguard their subsidiaries, resulting in potential gaps in coverage and inefficiencies in the procurement process.
Managing Complexity Across Multiple Products.
With over 70 separate security products deployed, the company struggled to maintain transparency, command, and cost-efficiency over its cybersecurity investments. The overlap between tools created redundancies, while the sheer number of solutions placed undue strain on the cybersecurity and IT teams, increasing the risk of burnout.
If this sounds familiar, read on!
Solution
The company hired ORNA to help analyze and optimize its cybersecurity tool stack, aiming to balance cost efficiency, tool management workload, and comprehensive security coverage. Our VICO methodology was used for the Tools Gap Assessment.
The project was designed to assess the company’s existing cybersecurity solutions across multi-cloud and on-premises infrastructure environments (including hybrid HQ/Data Centers, SaaS applications, endpoints, FWaaS, CASB, and more), identify redundancies, and provide a strategy for reducing costs while improving or maintaining cybersecurity standards.
Project Approach
We undertook a comprehensive cybersecurity solutions gap and coverage assessment, including:
Analysis of over 300 tools and technologies deployed across the company’s multi-cloud and on-premises environments.
Conversations with 12 customer stakeholders from various business units to understand their specific cybersecurity needs and concerns.
Review of over 40 internal documentation articles and compliance frameworks to ensure alignment with corporate and regulatory standards.
Findings
Throughout this 3-month engagement, ORNA uncovered several critical insights:
11 cybersecurity products with unused licenses were found across the portfolio, contributing to unnecessary expenditures.
60% in vendor price variability was identified, showing significant opportunities for cost negotiation or replacement.
Consolidation or replacement of 8 security tools was recommended, allowing for streamlined management while improving coverage.
Results
The project led to remarkable improvements in both cost savings and security effectiveness:
38% reduction in annual cybersecurity spend was achieved through tool consolidation and vendor renegotiations.
The company's cybersecurity coverage was increased or maintained with fewer tools and vendors, ensuring that security wasn’t compromised while trimming excess costs.
Reduced burnout and overwhelm among the cybersecurity and IT teams, who previously had to manage the complexity of dozens of tools, by simplifying the stack and improving visibility across security functions.
All said and done, this comprehensive assessment and optimization project not only delivered significant cost savings but also enhanced the company’s cybersecurity posture.
You can view and download the full Case Study here.
By consolidating tools, eliminating redundancies, and streamlining vendor relationships, ORNA helped this customer strike a balance between budget efficiency and robust cybersecurity. This enabled the company to protect its extensive global operations with fewer resources while maintaining high security standards across its diverse portfolio of subsidiaries.
Closing Thoughts and Next Steps
Throwing more tools at the problem is tempting, particularly as both the industry, and the threats become more difficult to navigate.
Stay tuned for the next post in this series - we'll cover common control failures that lead to breaches and provide actionable strategies for improving the effectiveness of these tools.
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Yours truly,
The ORNA team
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