Is there one cybersecurity tool to rule them all? For most companies, the answer is probably yes.

A cybersecurity platform combines multiple security capabilities — endpoint security, threat response, event logging, and more—into a single system. 

There are Swiss Army knife cybersecurity platforms that perform a range of tasks, like extended detection and response (XDR), and platforms with more niche functions. 

For example, endpoint protection platforms (EPP) for individual devices, security orchestration, automation, and response (SOAR) platforms for automated response, cloud security platforms for cloud environments and data, unified threat management (UTM) platforms for integrating multiple security functions, and so on.

A consolidated security platform combines all these threat detection and response functions in a single platform.

For end users, a consolidated security platform solves three core security challenges:

1. Human resources: Security analysts are unable to deal with 67% of the daily alerts received, with 83% reporting that alerts are false positives and not worth their time. With a consolidated security platform, analysts don’t have to dig through several systems to understand why an alert was triggered.

2. Siloed security: Disparate tools that do not natively integrate can harm security. Security teams operating over 50 tools are 8% less effective at detecting an attack and 7% less effective at responding to one.

3. Configuration management. Consolidated solutions remove or reduce the need for security engineering. Poorly configured tools can, at best, decrease security performance and, at worst, become an active source of risk when they fall out of patch or are compromised at a supply chain level.

A consolidated cybersecurity platform is not an ideal fit for every organisation, but a single vendor platform-based approach is likely to be much better than the alternative security tooling arrangement for most companies.

Here’s why.

Consolidated vs Best of Breed 

A security tooling mantra drummed into CISOs is to buy the best possible tool for every security case, such as the best network detection and response (NDR), endpoint detection and response (EDR), intrusion detection system (IDS), etc.

This is called buying “best of breed” and has, for a long time, been the default aspiration for (most) security leaders since IT marketers started using the term in the late 1990s. 

The purported benefits of best of breed tools are that if you buy the top tools from different vendors, you get the benefit of various threat intelligence feeds, detection techniques, and data types, and this results in incredible coverage, defence in depth, and so on—a hammer for every nail. 

This works great theoretically. 

For large enterprises with security buy-in from leadership, a detailed cybersecurity plan and expandable human resources budgets, it makes sense to get the best tools, pair them with dedicated in-house experts, and run complex but high-performance SOCs. 

Unfortunately, for most companies below this resource level and many at it, the reality of best of breed can be a management disaster.

Security Platforms Help Avoid Security Shelfware

Chase best-of-breed without a long-term cybersecurity plan (plus the budget needed to sustain it), and you can end up with multiple expensive solutions that sap time and resources for little return. 

A problem you could call buying “security shelfware.”

The average medium-sized company has 50-60 security tools, and the average enterprise has 130. Do you have the capacity to configure and manage dozens of security tools?

Most businesses are not able to employ an expert to manage every security product they feel they need. The vast majority of UK organisations have a security team of less than five people.

The result is that security is often fragmented, undermanaged and ultimately, siloed. 

For example, if the EDR solution provides one set of data and the NDR provides another, and there is little correlation between the two, this lack of integration makes investigations time-consuming and cumbersome. 

Critical opportunities to detect threats across different sources can be missed, leaving the overall security weaker than it should be.

Fantastic tools are throttled because they work in silos.

When a Consolidated Cybersecurity Platform Makes the Most Sense

Security is moving towards consolidation. Research by Gartner shows that over 50% of organisations were trying to consolidate their security tools back in 2022, double the figure from the previous year.  

For every organisation, having fewer security tools and vendors with the same amount of coverage makes a lot of sense. 

However, there are some cases where a consolidated cybersecurity platform is a particularly good choice. We recommend that companies consider a consolidated security platform when they have:

• A small cybersecurity team, i.e., <5 FTEs.

• Budget for security tools but not headcount.

• No prior security tool stack or an evolving need.

• Low tolerance for security tool configuration.

• No, or a low-level, cybersecurity plan. 

A consolidated cybersecurity platform makes the most sense in an environment where the need for cybersecurity is greater than the security management capacity — a very common situation.

SenseOn’s Advantage 

There are cybersecurity platforms, and there are cybersecurity platforms.

Some vendors market platforms that are essentially a range of pre-existing tools that they have integrated long after they were originally developed. 

While the platform being sold may act as a connected solution, it's still relying on data and sensors that were never designed to be integrated. The end result is poorer detection rates, visibility gaps, and missed threats.

SenseOn's cybersecurity solution was natively built to provide an all-in-one solution for protecting endpoints, networks, and the cloud for its customers.

We use our Universal Sensor to analyse endpoint, network, and user behaviour from a single agent. The data is always unified and consolidated and presented to end users with an unmatched level of detail. 

The unified data is further enriched with additional analyses, including behavioural analytics, to fuel a real-time detection and response engine that identifies and maps threat behaviours to MITRE’s ATT&CK framework.

This results in reduced analyst workload, faster incident response and remediation, and a strengthened security posture.