In theory, having more security tools should reduce risk. But in reality, the opposite is becoming increasingly true. Many organizations are overladen with dozens, if not hundreds, of different data sets from tools and systems—both homegrown and vendor provided—that are uncorrelated, duplicative, and only provide snapshots in time. This security tool sprawl is creating complexity that can provide a false sense of security, leads to blind spots and a fractured view of risk, and contributes to security team burnout.

The Evolution of the Security Tech Stack

The security stack has evolved from core on-premises tools (firewalls, antivirus, etc.) into sprawling ecosystems covering endpoints, cloud, identity, applications, networks, containers, etc. And with the emergence of new threat categories, new categories of tools emerge: Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM), Adversarial Exposure Validation (AEV), and AI security to name a few.

In a world where security teams need to stay one step ahead of attackers, the continued evolution of the security tech stack is not without merit. However, reactively adding tools without taking a holistic approach can lead to fragmentation, with each tool generating its own inventory, telemetry, and alerts. The typical security tech stack includes tools that don’t “talk” to one another leading to silos of data.

When you have dozens, or hundreds, of solutions deployed across an environment and are faced with mountains of data, how do you get an actionable view of risk?

The Hidden Cost of Having Too Many or Redundant Tools

An obvious indication of tool sprawl is redundancy—where several tools are capable of performing the same or similar functions.

Many organizations have an EDR solution in addition to a traditional scanner-based vulnerability management solution.  Both provide visibility on endpoints (though it’s limited to what they can see individually) and can identify OS versions, software, and sometimes configurations. 

But the overlap doesn’t provide the full picture: the EDR provides partial vulnerability views, the VM only provides partial runtime context, and neither provides a single view of true exposure.

Tool sprawl and tool redundancy place constraints on limited budgets and divides attention and resources across multiple dashboards, alert queues, maintenance cycles, and more. 

A few of the hidden costs include:

• An incomplete view of your environment: Data generated from disparate sources doesn’t provide an accurate inventory of assets—control number one in major security frameworks, including NIST, CIS, ISO, PCI, HIPAA, GBLA and more.
• Increased potential for security gaps: Disparate tools create silos with each tool having limited visibility into what it can see. This can lead to missing or misconfigured controls that are difficult to identify.
• Difficulty prioritizing vulnerabilities: Without having a centralized view of devices, identities, software, vulnerabilities, and security controls—and the relationships between them—you can’t truly prioritize exposures.
• Lack of visibility into the remediation process: Data in disparate tools doesn’t enable you to verify the completion of remediation actions or track their state over time.

Tools acting in isolation and providing a single source of data can’t answer crucial questions like, “Which exposures are of greatest risk to our organization based on our specific business operations?”

The Sevco Exposure Assessment Platform for Better Risk Reduction

With the Sevco EAP, you can centralize exposures across your attack surface and manage asset inventory, vulnerability management, cloud security, and remediation with one platform. 

Fix control gaps
Sevco quickly and easily integrates with your existing tools via API to generate a complete asset inventory of applications, devices, users, and vulnerabilities –
and the complex relationships between them. This asset intelligence provides the visibility that enables you to proactively
manage the deployment and configuration of security controls to close security gaps.

Prioritize the exposures that truly matter
Vulnerability prioritization shouldn’t follow a one size fits all approach. Sevco enables you to unify vulnerability data with your (complete and real-time) asset inventory, threat intelligence, and business context so you can take a holistic, data-driven approach to reducing risk. 

Power proactive exposure management
Uplevel your vulnerability management to Continuous Threat Exposure Management (CTEM) with the Sevco Exposure Assessment Platform (EAP). The Sevco platform enables you to assess your attack surface, prioritizes threats, and remediate exposures—prove that critical exposures are actually resolved via a remediation feedback loop—going beyond the closure 
a ticket.

Sevco delivers better data to enable better decisions so you can improve your outcomes and reduce risk. Ready to see how Sevco can make sense of tool sprawl? Contact us for a demo and we’ll show you how.