Consolidating Security Vendors

Security and risk management leaders are not happy with how their security system is working at present. The system is not efficient, and it is hard to integrate different parts of the system. As a result, these leaders are reducing the number of security vendors they use. According to a recent survey by Gartner, 75% of organizations are pursuing security vendor consolidation in 2022 which is up from 29% in 2020. 57% of organizations are engaging with less than ten security vendors, as they are looking to optimize to fewer vendors in key areas like secure access service edge (SASE) and extended detection and response (XDR).

Organizations that are looking to consolidate vendors should not consider cost optimization as their primary driver. To reduce costs, organizations must reduce products, licenses, and features, or renegotiate contracts. Organizations list two things that are hindering organizations from consolidating their security vendors. Either they are not having enough time or are in partnership with a security vendor that is too rigid, to pursue security consolidation.

Today every organisation wants to improve risk posture and the major reason why organizations are consolidating their security vendors is to reduce complexity and improve risk posture and not save budget or improve procurement. 65% of organizations consolidate security vendors to improve risk posture whereas only 29% of organizations consolidate to decrease spending on licensing.

Gartner predicts that XDR and SASE are compelling options for security leaders to start their organizations’ consolidation journey. SASE secures enterprise access, while XDR detects and responds to threats through increased visibility on networks, cloud, endpoints, and other components.

The survey reveals that 41.5% of respondents expect to have adopted SASE within their organizations by the end of 2022. 54.5% of organizations are planning to adopt XDR by the end of 2022. 57% of organizations were able to resolve security threats faster after adopting an XDR strategy. Over 50% of surveyed organizations use SASE projects for simplifying network and security policy management and improving security posture.

89% of the organizations that were surveyed want SASE and XDR to work together. However, 46% of security leaders in some organizations choose to keep them separate but still make sure they can interact with each other. This allows them to have the best-of-breed functionality.

Gartner found that vendor consolidation can take a long time with nearly two-thirds of organisations saying they have been consolidating for three years. This will give enough time to account for any incumbent vendor switching costs, as well as potential vendor mergers and acquisitions disruptions in the security market.