Blog Post Nov 14, 2023

The Significance of Vendor Consolidation

Organizations worldwide are increasingly focusing on vendor consolidation as an essential strategy to harness the full potential of automation, digital certificates, and digital security. By streamlining vendor relationships, organizations can achieve enhanced efficiency, improved security, reduced complexity, and in some cases substantial cost savings. However, time constraints and switching costs can present large barriers to integrating platforms, and when consolidating businesses need to make sure there aren’t gaps in security coverage.

As the scope and variety of cyber threats continues to increase, we have seen a proliferation of point solutions and features, and a resulting desire to reduce that vendor footprint—or at least facilitate using them together.

Minimizing Security Gaps

It’s clear that security and risk management leaders are growing more unhappy with operational inefficiencies and the lack of integration of a heterogeneous security stack. Enterprises —more specifically, IT teams and leaders —are looking for smarter solutions.

Systems must be efficient and integrated rather than point security products, and Gartner (2023) found that 75% of organizations are pursuing vendor consolidation strategies, up from 29% in 2020, to put together platforms with universal coverage.

Open and interoperable solutions are crucial for enterprise IT leaders to be confident in their ability to manage digital security, and consolidating to one platform with a single interface is an obvious way to achieve this.

Automation, Consolidation, and Cost

Automation has become a cornerstone of modern business operations. It's not just a buzzword; it's a transformative force that is reshaping the way companies function. From streamlining repetitive tasks to improving efficiency and reducing human error, automation is delivering tangible benefits across various industries. With automation usually comes cost savings, if not in the short term then over time by reducing human error and increasing scalability.

Consolidation, however, isn’t just about saving money. Although increased spending can be considered a drawback, it is sometimes an acceptable investment if it improves security and team efficiency. Organizations are looking to consolidate security vendors to reduce complexity and improve risk posture, not to immediately save on budget or to improve procurement.

This means that although security vendor consolidation may be introduced with a goal of lower cost of ownership, simplified resourcing and reduced operational complexity are the main attractions.

Sectigo Certificate Manager

Sectigo Certificate Manager (SCM) provides companies with a tool that not only fully automates digital certificate lifecycles and streamlines certificate operations, but also acts as a consolidation and cost-saving tool. It is a universal platform purpose-built to manage digital certificate lifecycles to secure every human and machine identity across an enterprise, all from a single interface.

SCM automates the issuance and management of certificates, alongside those from other publicly trusted Certificate Authorities (CAs) and private CAs, including Microsoft AD CS, Google Certificate Authority Service, and AWS Private CA. It delivers a single management system with the ability for businesses to set permissions and multiple user accounts—allowing various departments to have full control of their certificate process. Through this streamlining, companies are given more insight into budgeting and overall management.

Whilst automation and the benefits of simplifying and modernizing processes may be the initial drawcard for IT teams, the ability to consolidate from multiple vendors into one CA agnostic platform further incentivizes teams to make the switch.

“The worst enemy of security is complexity.”

Bruce Schneier

Consolidation through Outsourcing

Businesses of all sizes should take advantage of consolidation through outsourcing to service providers. Regardless of the attack surface, the need to outpace demand and stay cybersecure while maintaining comprehensive security controls presents resourcing challenges many cannot sustain.

Gartner (2022) has shared that 57% of organizations are working with less than 10 vendors for their security requirements. Consolidating vendors provides an opportunity to improve overall security posture, be more cost-effective, and reduce risk exposure, while simultaneously maximizing the fixed digital security budget.

Conclusion

Consolidation is a continuous exercise, much like decluttering your home isn’t a one-off activity, but one that must be built into a lifecycle and planned for regularly. Distributed workforces, hybrid and multi-cloud setups, and a broad range of vendors providing solutions has become the new norm. With cyber threats constantly evolving, and phishing, deepfakes, data poisoning, and ransomware being commonplace, consolidation needs to be regularly conducted to prevent gaps in security and leave their business susceptible to an attack either through human error with a certificate expiring or something more complex.

Businesses must recognize the symbiotic relationship between automation, digital security, and vendor consolidation. When managed effectively, these elements can propel organizations towards greater success and resilience in the ever-evolving digital landscape. You can’t secure what you can’t understand, and working with multiple tools when one does it all introduces risk unnecessarily.

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