5 reasons customers are choosing a cybersecurity platform over point products

Dean Watson

Lead Solutions Expert – Secure Networking at Infinigate

Threat actors constantly find new ways to compromise systems. Meanwhile, researchers analyse these threats and develop countermeasures, and defenders implement and monitor these protections. This ongoing cycle resembles is a cat-and-mouse game, making it not a question of ‘if’ an organisation will be compromised, but ‘when’.

The recommended strategy for cyber defence focuses on resiliency and reducing the attack surface. This is achieved through data and network protection and enhancing observability in networking and security tools.

However, implementing a robust defence strategy with traditional point-based solutions is a significant challenge for many IT teams due to gaps in tools, skills or resources. Consequently, many businesses find themselves at a disadvantage compared to larger organisations, existing in a state of cyber inequality.

However, just as the threat landscape evolves, so does the defence paradigm.

Organisations are increasingly adopting integrated platform solutions that provide holistic security coverage whilst minimising complexity and operational overheads.

In this blog, I explore five key reasons for the shift to a platform approach.

1 Reducing complexity

Over the last decade, there has been a trend toward simplifying and consolidating business operations through cloud adoption and digital transformation.

One of the biggest challenges for organisations in simplifying IT is the complexity of tooling – with the average large company deploying up to 100 security tools.

Managing a collection of point solutions is difficult, resource-intensive and costly, as each product typically requires its own interface, policies, and maintenance schedules, leading to increased administrative overhead.

It is also difficult to mitigate risks and analyse issues and alerts when they are in separate systems. The siloed nature of information can result in human error, which impacts the overall integrity of the system from a cybersecurity perspective.

To address these issues, some organisations have adopted logging tools or SIEM systems. However, these tools require administrators to not only interpret complex logging outputs but also create the right search queries to extract valuable insights.

By converging multiple security and networking functions into a single cloud-delivered service, a platform significantly reduces the complexity of managing disparate tools, providing a single, centralised console and unified policy management.

This simplification minimises the risk of human error, ensuring that security teams can operate more efficiently.

“The platform approach to cybersecurity plays very well with the ongoing digital transformation process that organisations are familiar with. Why shouldn’t the advantages of a consolidated approach from a systems infrastructure perspective not apply to your edge and connectivity infrastructure and your overall cybersecurity posture as well?”

2 Short-term savings versus long-term costs

Cost-effectiveness is also a significant consideration for many enterprises.

While the initial investment in a security platform might appear substantial, it eliminates the need for multiple, disparate products, reducing the long-term costs associated with licensing, maintenance, and training.

The cost of systems over time can also introduce complexity. Multiple vendors acquired at different time periods can be cost effective for an organisation to implement. But over time, the running costs of these platforms will continue to increase because of the level of specialism needed to keep systems up and running or due to a lack of coherence between the systems.

In short, simplicity costs less.

3 Integration and leveraging AI and ML

Integration is one of the pillars of modern cybersecurity, enabling organisations to eliminate a lot of repetitive or manual tasks and achieve ‘single pane of glass’ visibility across the entire infrastructure.

However, the more disparate your systems are, the more complicated that automaton or integration journey can be.

When opting for a ‘roll your own’ integration strategy, the organisation and its partners are responsible for ensuring that different vendor solutions communicate effectively to maintain system uptime and a secure environment by providing the necessary visibility.

Pushing significant changes on disparate systems can be complicated, often leading to increased developer time and costs. And if the integration fails, the reliability of your ‘one true source’ of information is compromised.
With a single platform approach, the vendor handles all the cybersecurity and networking toolchain integration for you.

With a single platform approach, the vendor handles all the cybersecurity and networking toolchain integration for you.

It’s important to note that not all platforms are built entirely from one vendor’s intellectual property. When the vendor manages the integration, they also ensure everything works correctly when there is an update.

In the long term, a fully integrated platform with a single management interface offers significant operational advantages by removing all the integration and compatibility headaches and the complexity of siloed information and alerts.

In addition, the infusion of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools into platforms augments security efforts and helps IT teams keep up with evolving threats.

Organisations are eager to invest in solutions that offer real-time anomaly detection, rapid incident response, and continuous monitoring.

“A platform approach allows organisations to leverage AI and ML where it makes sense to cut down on noise – enhancing threat detection and response by providing an administrator with all the correlated events related to an attack.”

4 Rapid response to changes in the cybersecurity landscape

If the implementation for a new addition to your security fabric turns from a six-week to a six-month project, any advantages gained from that solution are negated by the time it takes to integrate it into the overall workflow. Moreover, the implementation is going to be a substantial part of the project cost.

A fully integrated platform, however, simplifies this process. As businesses face new threats or shifts in the cybersecurity landscape, it becomes as easy as flipping a switch to turn on additional capabilities.

Initially, you only need a brief setup period to define your security posture and how you want that component of the overarching solution to work. With a platform, you can be up and running with a new level of protection or a new level of functionality out of a platform in 48 hours – as opposed to weeks or months.

Ultimately over time, a true platform gives organisations the ability to respond at the speed of business to new challenges, nailing down the policy and enabling everyone to safely and securely get on with their jobs.

“A platform gives organisations the ability to respond at the speed of business to new challenges and security threats.”

5 Ensuring a consistent security posture

Security is a data problem. A platform makes high-quality, contextualised data available in real-time for protection and stores that data in a single data lake for AI-based detection.

Ultimately, a platform enables a consistent security posture without having any breaks in your tooling chains. It reduces the time to decision – the crucial period when am organisation is vulnerable. The sooner you can provide the relevant information relating to that threat, the sooner you can close a vulnerability.

Cato SASE cloud platform: enabling organisation to simplify, reduce costs and become more agile

SASE converges SD-WAN, a cloud network, and Security Service Edge (SSE) functions (including FWaaS, CASB, DLP, SWG, and ZTNA) into a unified, cloud-native service.

Cato SASE optimally connects all enterprise locations, users, applications and clouds into a global and secure, cloud-native platform. Cato can be gradually deployed to replace existing security point solutions and legacy network services.

With Cato’s true SASE platform, enterprises can eliminate the effort and costs required to maintain a fragmented and complex infrastructure, reduce the risk of breaches and data loss, enable secure work from anywhere, and improve access to applications on premises and in the cloud.

The platform maintains an optimal security posture and a superb application experience worldwide, freeing IT teams to better support the business.

If you want to find out more about Cato’s true, autonomous cloud native security platform, the team at Infinigate are here to help. Email cato.uk@infinigate.com today to set up a call.

Infinigate can accelerate your Cato journey by providing prompt quoting and pre-sales support through our expert team.

Partners receive assistance for scoping, qualification calls, and POC processes with access to dedicated lab environments. For Business Development supports, the team facilitates Sales Enablement sessions, collaborates on marketing campaigns, and assigns marketing managers for strategy and campaign support.

This collaborative approach empowers partners and drives effective marketing efforts within the Cato ecosystem.