Organizations are pursuing security vendor consolidation

Acronyms are plentiful in IT security: EDR, XDR, DLP, CASB, SDWAN, ZTNA, SWG, IPS, EPP and many more. This is reflected in many organizations' technology stacks, where not only costs are rising, but also complexity. And more complexity means more risk, as mistakes are easier to get unnoticed and the attack surface tends to get larger.

In this context, it is interesting to read a recent survey by Gartner Inc., conducted in North America, Asia Pacific, and EMEA, which shows that global organizations are actively trying to reduce the number of cyber security vendors they rely on in their technology stacks. The survey found that organizations want to consolidate their security vendors to reduce complexity and improve risk posture, not to save on budget or to improve procurement.

Also, more than half of organizations surveyed look primarily into 2 direction for vendor consolidation: extended detection and response (XDR) and secure access service edge (SASE) seem to be the ideal starting areas to begin consolidating vendors.

SASE provides secure enterprise access to any devices trying to reach an organization's resources or applications, regardless their location. By moving the inspection layer entirely to the cloud, SASE can consolidate many technologies, starting from VPN up to CASB and SDWAN.

XDR on the other hand focuses on increased operational awareness and response capabilities otherwise missing in traditional antimalware solutions on all infrastructure layers, but primarily endpoints. By focusing on endpoints, XDR can consolidate antimalware, DLP, behavior monitoring, patch and vulnerability management on endpoints and other infrastructure assets. While 89% of surveyed organizations want SASE and XDR to work together, security and risk management leaders will often opt to keep them distinct from one another but ensure they can interoperate. This approach allows flexibility to select best-of-breed functionality.

Read all the survey results here!