Thanks to modern technology, there’s an abundance of tools and services that can help organizations identify and respond to cyberthreats with confidence. Yet, a recent survey from the International Data Group found that almost 80% of senior IT security leaders are concerned that their enterprises aren’t equipped to prevent cyberattacks even after investing in security solutions. The reality is that it can be tempting for security teams to invest in solutions based on tech fads, news headlines and pressure from product vendors — all of which can quickly drain budgets and resources without resolving long-term, business-critical security issues.
To build an effective security strategy and reduce risk across your entire organization, IT leaders need to prioritize threat intelligence, data monitoring and proactive preparedness. Unfortunately, this is impossible for most organizations to accomplish without understanding how to develop strategic budgeting and investment habits. Discover how IT leaders can improve budgeting processes and combine different buying models together to maximize security coverage across their entire organizations without draining their budgets:
Invest in Cross-Vector, Not Single-Vector, Coverage
There are countless security solutions on the market designed to protect one specific area of your enterprise. But these single-point or vector-based solutions can use up your IT budget without resolving all of your critical business security issues. In fact, building this type of vector-based IT strategy can leave major security and visibility gaps between solutions, leaving easy entry points for attackers. IT teams that purchase single-point security solutions also tend to do so after reacting to biased vendor information, which comes from fear and pressure — not from an informed strategy meant to enhance company defenses in the long run.
Gartner reports that “traditional network-centric, point solution security tools are no longer sufficient to combat the speed and complexity of today’s cyberattacks.”
In an effort to reduce risk and restore visibility across all vectors, Gartner reveals that 80% of organizations with critical infrastructure will replace their siloed security products for more unified solutions by 2024.
Ultimately, a single-vector security approach is not an effective strategy for protecting an organization. Nor is it realistic for organizations to invest in every single security vector, especially not all at once (which, of course, leaves some “to be secured” vectors vulnerable). Instead, IT leaders can focus on protecting their most critical vectors while reducing security and visibility gaps across their different solutions. This cross-vector security approach allows staff to prevent threats by monitoring and responding to potential attacks holistically throughout their entire organization.
Assessing the Cross-Vector Coverage Buying Models
For many IT leaders, one of the biggest challenges of adopting a proper security solution is finding the right product purchasing and management model that fits their business’ unique needs. Choosing between in-house, co-managed and outsourced security platforms can often be a near-impossible task if you don’t know what tradeoffs your business can and can’t afford to make.
“Everything in cybersecurity is a tradeoff, a juggling act between cost, effort, likely results, and risk acceptance,” Mckinsey & Company states.
Take building a security solution for analyzing suspicious behavior in-house, for example. While developing a practice in-house will give your team greater control and access to information, it requires extensive resources and skilled staff to create and manage. Plus, it may lack the sophistication, speed or advanced features that co-managed or outsourced solutions offer.
Co-managed solutions, on the other hand, can help to offload the burden of monitoring threats to a third-party organization. However, the customer would get little to no support in responding to threats and can wrack up high data transit and storage costs.
Buying an outsourced solution also comes with its own set of tradeoffs and advantages. Although this buying model offers extensive third-party monitoring and guidance, it can be expensive, lack customization opportunities and limit customer visibility. Not to mention that customers are often restricted by their vendor’s capabilities as well.
So when it comes to developing your company’s threat intelligence, monitoring and preparedness strategies, IT leaders must weigh their business goals, risk, budget and resources against the tradeoffs of each buying model to find the best route forward. From there, security staff can better understand why combining different buying models together can provide the strongest business results.
Optimizing Your Budget and Vector Coverage for Success
Most of the time, opting for a single buying model across the board involves too many tradeoffs to make the payoff worthwhile. Third-parties — which can provide the most effective security outcomes for your business — don’t always provide the best proactive threat prevention and remediation services. Nor is taking on an entire security platform in-house an affordable or sustainable option.
Therefore, the right security solution often involves mixing different buying models together. This allows organizations to draw on third-party specialists to close security gaps while remaining proactive and handling remediation tasks in-house.
Since cyberattacks on industries with critical infrastructure grew by 3900% between 2013 and 2020, it’s become increasingly important for IT leaders to spend their budgets more carefully. For instance, it’s essential for security staff to leave wiggle room in their budgets throughout the year and avoid blowing the whole budget early on. The last thing anyone wants is to have no funds available to deal with a new security problem that becomes an “impossible tradeoff” — which is an issue that your organization can’t afford to ignore. Keep in mind that securing the right budging practices, paired with a mixed buying model for cross-vector security coverage, can put you in the best possible position to be proactive and respond effectively to potential threats.
ActZero’s experts can also help you reach an in-depth understanding of your enterprise’s security posture and identify what the most affordable yet successful security vector coverage would look like. For a deeper look at the pros and cons of the buying models, check out our white paper. Or, for a practical example of achieving affordable cross-vector coverage, demo ActZero’s MDR service here.
