As cyber threats keep evolving and compliance regulations keep updating, most organizations add new cybersecurity solutions/technology as a reactive measure to keep up with them.
However, this presents a whole new wave of challenges for them.
Through this edition of the Journal, we will explore what technology sprawl is and how it creates a whole bunch of challenges for organizations.
What is tech sprawl in cybersecurity?
Cybersecurity tech sprawl occurs when organizations, as a reaction to fresh security weaknesses or additions in compliance requirements, add new tools/solutions without fully assessing the capabilities of existing cybersecurity setups.
Adding new solutions may temporarily solve the challenges for organizations, but in the long run, it may lead to graver issues. Let us explore the issues.
What are the major challenges faced by businesses due to tech sprawl?
The following are some of the serious challenges that can be faced by businesses due to tech sprawl:
Problems with operations
Too many security tools/solutions can cause the problem of overlapping cybersecurity functions or functions that are too redundant. It can create a complex and difficult to manage environment, giving birth to operational challenges that are way too complex for a small security team to solve.
It can develop siloes within solutions, limiting visibility & control and making it challenging for critical security information to reach the right people leading to operational inefficiency and reducing detection and response times significantly.
Rising costs
As an organization adds new solutions it also must bear the licensing, maintenance, and support costs that come with them. They must also hire additional experts who can provide specialized expertise to manage the solutions. But in reality, many organizations pay for solutions that are underutilized, ultimately becoming a burden for them.
Challenge managing solutions
More security tools would mean needing more people on your team who specialize in that specific technology. It becomes a challenge for small security teams to manage the solutions and keep up with the best practices specific to the solutions, often leading to underutilization of solutions and resources.
Integration challenges
Many organizations add new solutions on top of existing legacy solutions that don’t work smoothly together. It can make security processes highly complex, making it challenging to gain accurate data for analysis since not all solutions are connected and aligned, causing high inefficiencies in incident response and delaying threat detection and response.
How to solve security tech sprawl in cybersecurity?
The following are some of the effective ways through which organizations can solve the problem of cybersecurity tech sprawl:
- Take an inventory of all the data and assets critical for your organization,
- Take a risk assessmentto understand the areas that need more prioritization.
- Deploy a SIEM solutionthat can help compile data from different sources.
- Evaluate every tool and check if it really serves the purpose. It would mean asking questions like “Does it meet the detection monitoring and response objectives?”.
- Keep your intelligence sources diverse for cross-verification, making way for more accurate threat detection. It can also help improve security posture.
- Evaluate whether your current security team is enough to manage existing tools or if you need an additional in-house SOC team.
- Regularly perform a detailed review of all the tools currently in action, last used, etc.
- Consider platformization
How does STRIEGO help you solve tech sprawl problem?
STRIEGOis our open-architecture, vendor-agnostic, multi-tier, multi-tenant security platform that seamlessly blends with your existing infrastructure. With flexible API and connectors, it can easily integrate all your current and future solutions as your organization expands in size.
It offers centralized control and visibility to swiftly detect and respond to suspicious activities, security weaknesses, and threats based on multi-sourced threat intelligence. With a round-the-clock team of cybersecurity and compliance experts backing it up, you can make the most of your current security setup and realize value from your cybersecurity investments.
