7 Ways To Optimize Your Security Technology Investments

Security technology spending is at an all-time high.  Determining the right strategy to reduce cost is essential to security planning and any CISO’s agenda.  Consider implementing the 7 following ways to optimize new security technology investments.

1. Consolidating security vendors for particular solutions will reduce cost as a result of volume discounts and costs associated with increased complexity, risk, down time and staff management.
2. Reducing the number of endpoint agents will reduce cost by decreasing the complexity of the environment, testing cycles per agents, and administrative staff time required.
3. Negotiating hardware and software licensing costs as well as security professional services for longer periods of time allows security vendors to reduce paperwork and management costs, which in turn can be provided back to the organization.
4. Implementing adequate security protections can reduce costs associated with employee productivity loss, security breaches, as well as the IT labor costs associated with endpoint infections, managing signatures, false positives, tuning, etc.
5. Using automated software to provide agent updates, tuning, patches, and signatures reduces costs associated with employee productivity loss and IT labor management.
6. Reducing complexity of the environment by consolidating consoles for items such as endpoint and network technology, logging, or security configuration management provides faster access to relative data and possible security incidents.  Less complexity and faster access reduce costs by decreasing the infection rate and reducing the IT labor management.
7. Focusing on the primary business while outsourcing certain security functions should be evaluated regularly.  Some costs may be reduced by avoiding security infrastructure and software costs as well as additional IT labor and training costs.