What Every Cybersecurity Team Wants (But Few Have)

You would expect cybersecurity teams to be overly equipped by now. After all, you’re facing off against constant attacks, any of which could ignite an existential crisis within the company. And with the rise of state-sponsored hackers, aggressive cyber gangs, and malicious forms of AI, the fight will only intensify. Even leadership understands the stakes at this point if cybersecurity falters. With all that pressure to stop attacks, security teams should logically have whatever they need, whenever they need it.  

But you know that’s rarely the case.  

Whether it’s time, tools, training, team members, or top-down support, most security professionals feel like they’re lacking adequate resources to handle a threat landscape becoming more dangerous and dynamic every day. Stress levels are higher for two thirds of security professionals than they were just five years ago. And while it would be simple to prescribe MORE of everything, budgets, teams, and security stacks cannot magically multiply. Rather, you must rely on strategic tweaks and targeted improvements to fix this situation. 

No one knows what’s missing better than the security pros dealing with those gaps every day. As a close partner to cybersecurity practitioners, here’s what we’re hearing:  Holistic Solutions Over Point Products The average company now uses 83 different security solutions from 29 different vendors according to IBM. Platforms were supposed to be the solution to ever-sprawling toolkits. However, many platforms simply integrate similar or complementary tools, which helps reduce the total number of solutions but, thus far, fails to deliver what security pros actually want: A single platform that integrates everything.  

More than just a universal cybersecurity tool, however, teams want holistic solutions. Instead of one-size-fits all products and services, they want vendors to tailor solutions that operate at the intersection of cyber risk, business strategy, and IT evolution. Security teams don’t want vendors to promise that their flagship offerings can solve any problem. They want vendors to start with the problems then build holistic solutions to match. 

Scalable Cybersecurity Options 

You’re only as good at the tools at your disposal, and most security pros don’t like what they have. More than 80% of them spend over 2 hours a day triaging security events, half say their tools obscure the real attacks, and 60% believe security tools were bought just to check compliance boxes. Sound familiar? The cybersecurity market is flooded with tools that do too much, overwhelming teams with features they don’t want, alerts they don’t need, and data they can’t use.  

Oversized cybersecurity offerings arbitrarily inflate costs despite also being unwieldy and inefficient. The biggest drawback, however, is they leave small and mid-sized businesses without a solution that can scale along with their growth, putting their whole trajectory in jeopardy. You can’t downsize defenses built for global corporations. And without solutions truly suited to SMBs, cybersecurity will always feel like a bigger struggle.  

Tech-Agnostic Vendors 

Increasingly, the IT infrastructure itself looks like just as much of a threat to cybersecurity as anything that arrives from the outside. One recent survey showed that 64% of security professionals believe the lack of interoperability within complex tech stacks poses a major hurdle to strong security. When it’s inefficient or impossible for IT to collaborate with security tools, you only have two options: DIY a solution or leave something vulnerable to attack.  

Interoperability issues will only get worse as tech infrastructure grows rapidly, in size and complexity, due to AI adoption. That’s one of the main reasons security pros overwhelmingly prefer tech-agnostic solutions that work deeply and seamlessly with the solutions already in place while posing no limits on what future solutions can be put in place. Software evaluation cycles are shorter with tech-agnostic vendors, as are implementation times, and overall costs are typically lower thanks to less friction. All this, yet truly tech-agnostic vendors remain in the minority.  

Verifiable Security Upgrades 

Vague promises from vendors to upgrade cybersecurity by an ambiguous amount over an unknown timeline aren’t acceptable. Security practitioners face too much risk from the outside and too much pressure from the inside to put all their trust into the word of vendors. What’s more, regulations, insurance policies, and business contracts increasingly expect you to quantify cybersecurity strengths and prove your ongoing effectiveness.  

In response, you want products that can put a number on cyber risk and clearly show when, where, why, and how it’s going up or down. Likewise, you’re looking for service providers who can make a meaningful and measurable impact on cybersecurity. For example, instead of claiming they patched everything found in a pen test, they conduct a complementary second test to prove the problems are gone. Expecting vendors to be transparent and accountable will become even more important as “AI-driven” cybersecurity continues making big promises.  

The Fastest Way to Transform Cybersecurity 

Our team was recently at RSA, where opinionated people are in no short supply. Over and over again, we heard these complaints echoed from cybersecurity professionals who have felt the weight on their shoulders getting heavier and don’t see cybersecurity vendors doing enough to help. They were surrounded by companies showcasing their latest and greatest innovations, yet so many still missed the mark.  

For these same reasons, our team also saw lots of interest in what NopalCyber does differently: offer products, services, and consulting services spanning offense, defense, and GRC, enabling us to tailor a cybersecurity solution for any businesses with the correct size, strength, and signals.  

As a team made up almost entirely of past and present security pros, we understand your situation, and we’re passionate about making it better. Ready to put the missing pieces in place? Contact us.   

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