The Value of Security Simplicity

As time passes, technology and human innovation have advanced rapidly. not only in terms of available connectivity, bandwidth, and processing power, but also in terms of the networking and security landscape. For every technological advancement in consumer and business productivity, IT systems, operations, and security must also try to keep pace.

IT and security leaders must consider multiple security product categories: network and infrastructure, web, endpoint, application, data, mobile, risk and compliance, operations and incident response, threat intelligence, IoT, IAM, email and messaging, and more. For each category there are multiple vendors with different product sets, architectures, and capabilities. While each product you purchase is intended to strengthen your security posture and reduce risk, these products may also be increasing the complexity of your environment.

Complexity Erodes Security

Many have considered it best practice to purchase products based on market perception as "best of breed." This approach seems logical but can be detrimental. getting these products to work together can be difficult or impossible. Even products from the same vendor can lack integration, especially if the product was the result of an acquisition. Even with out-of-the-box integrations, getting everything to work as desired can still be very time-consuming.

Integration is not convergence. A converged solution has a single management application for all functions of the platform. Separate consoles or a pseudo-unified console that requires plugins are not converged. For cloud-delivered offerings, a converged solution offers all capabilities at all PoPs. Non-converged solutions can drastically increase management touch, increasing administrative overhead and cost while eroding security value.

For every new product and management application, the opportunity for misconfiguration increases as does the number of policies. Misconfigurations can easily lead to high-profile security incidents, while multiple sets of separate policies can lead to gaps that are difficult to identify. A converged security platform provides holistic visibility into your organization's policies and makes compliance audits easier.

Is Your Security Stack Weighing You Down?

In addition to hurting your organization's budget and security posture, point-security products also reduce your ability to be agile and innovate. You may need to manage an update schedule for each of your devices and products. While most vendors have automatic update options, the best practice is to test updates before putting them into production and monitor impacts afterward. More vendors and more products can easily mean more problems.

A converged SASE platform removes this friction. Single management plane, consistent policy enforcement at every point of presence, and a vendor accountable for the entire stack. not just their slice of it.