Cybersecurity’s Broken Model: The Cost of Overcomplication and Underperformance – Source: www.cyberdefensemagazine.com

Cybersecurity is in need of a reckoning.

Global cybersecurity spend reached a record $79.2 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow by almost 10% this year – a reflection of the evolving, and increasingly nefarious threats in our hyper-digital world. On paper, that’s a good thing. More investment should mean better protection, right?

Yes, it should.

But, despite the rise in spending, in the first half of 2024 alone there was still a 14% increase in reports of compromised data compared to the same period last year, impacting around 1.07 billion victims.

When increased investment fails to improve security outcomes, the conclusion can only be that there are fundamental flaws in how we approach cybersecurity. These failures are the result of an industry that has over-complicated its solutions. Companies today either employ a multitude of rigid, decentralized, independently managed tools, each serving a too-narrow function, or opt for purposely “all-encompassing” solutions that are costly, and too broad to address specific organizational needs. Choosing the lesser of two evils means that evil wins either way.

Two things are now clear – detrimental cyberattacks will continue to proliferate, and traditional approaches to cybersecurity infrastructure are increasingly proving to be insufficient.

One-Trick Ponies

The “one-trick-ponies” are a common class of cybersecurity tools, each built for a niche application. They’re treated like patches in a quilt — their purposed appeal is that organizations can adopt exactly the solution they need for any given vulnerability and piece together a cybersecurity posture that suits their needs perfectly.

It’s convenient in theory, but truthfully, it’s too good to be true.

To adequately address today’s security threats, organizations are forced to deploy upwards of 50 independently managed systems just to stay secure. The average enterprise security toolset includes 60-80 distinct solutions, with some enterprises reaching as many as 140.

With the cybersecurity landscape rapidly growing and evolving, new tools must be constantly adopted and deployed just to keep up, which is why there’s been a59% increase in cyber budgets year-over-year. 

While each of these tools serves a distinct purpose, deploying a large stack of such tools is complex. As every tool is configured separately – each accompanied by its own dashboard and alert system – managing this type of security infrastructure becomes dangerously difficult and costly, requiring extensive manpower and expertise.

The lack of synergy between these tools also creates inefficiencies and increases the risk of misconfiguration. Each tool is managed independently, so settings may be incorrectly selected, misconfigured, or misaligned with other operating tools, leading to security gaps. On top of all this, teams are having to manually manage multiple security tools – each with its own system of notification and alerts – so responding to every incident becomes highly challenging, making it easy to overlook critical alerts and vulnerabilities.

Ultimately, a suite of individual tools only provides a partial view of an organization’s security landscape, resulting in fragmented visibility and unnecessarily challenging conditions for security teams to construct a comprehensive understanding of their organization’s defensive posture.

The “Panacea”

An alternative to the one-trick-ponies is the “cure-all solution” approach. Why patchwork together your own quilt when you could just buy a full-coverage blanket?

Indeed, these solutions are designed to offer a broad range of features across various aspects of cybersecurity, all in one neat package, promising to streamline security management by consolidating it into a single platform.

While they somewhat alleviate the issue of complexity, sometimes they can be overwhelming, like a huge, heavy-duty duvet when all you need is a light throw. Additionally, because of all of the extra material included, the cost of all-in-one services can be significantly higher than targeted solutions, and they come with their own set of limitations.

Comprehensive packages often bundle solutions that might not actually be relevant to the needs of a specific organization. Companies will purchase these packages anyway because they include tools that the organization’s current security posture requires – but they also end up paying a hefty price for features they don’t actually need.

These packages are also designed to serve a broad range of industries, meaning they aren’t optimized for the unique needs of an organization in a particular sector. These solutions tend to be inflexible and continue to be so as organizations evolve and their security needs change, limiting the effectiveness of the solution as new vulnerabilities emerge.

Tailored Tools

The cybersecurity landscape is evolving at a frightening pace, and with an ever-widening array of threats, the ideal solution should combine the benefits of the two approaches above, without being bogged down by the setbacks.

The preeminent solution is a “tailored tools” approach – it supports a highly customizable suite of tools, while remaining centralized and comprehensive enough to cover any gaps. These cybersecurity solutions are designed for flexibility – security teams can pick and choose exactly what they need to address the unique challenges and vulnerabilities of their organization. This way, companies only pay for the solutions they need, resulting in a more affordable and organizationally relevant security posture. A small business, for example, could adopt a tailored package that doesn’t include unnecessary or complex features that are only relevant for large enterprises.

Like cure-all tools, tailored solutions also provide integrated dashboards, allowing organizations to manage their entire security posture from a single platform. Yet, unlike an all-in-one solution, these platforms aren’t cluttered with irrelevant functionalities or alerts. Rather, tailored solutions are configured specifically to focus on the most relevant threats, resulting in faster response times and fewer gaps. This approach also allows for data consolidation from each solution to provide more holistic visibility for streamlined communication and data-informed decision-making – both of which are difficult to achieve in the current cybersecurity landscape.

New solutions for a changing world

In a world where hackers run rampant, empowered by new technology and increasingly complex digital networks to exploit, spending on comprehensive cybersecurity could be the most important investment an organization makes. But traditional approaches to cybersecurity continue to prove inadequate, and the cybersecurity industry is reaching the point of desperation to evolve beyond its reliance on rigid or siloed solutions.

A tailored solution approach not only addresses the limitations of existing models, but will pave the way for a more effective, efficient, and agile method of defense against the widening threat landscape. By optimizing cybersecurity spend, companies can invest more time and money into growing their business without compromising on security. It’s a win-win proposition for organizations of any kind and size.

About the Author

Guy Flechter is the CEO and Founder of Sola Security. His passion for innovation and disruption of the Security industry led him to co-found Cider Security, which was acquired by Palo Alto Networks in 2022. His career in the industry spans over 20 years, with key roles at AppsFlyer, LivePerson, and Palo Alto Networks.