Why do organizations buy point solutions for cybersecurity and networking?

For too many organizations, buying point solutions for networking and security has become routine. It often seems like the simplest, fastest, most cost-effective approach to focus on one specific networking need or one security threat at a time. And most vendors are happy to encourage that behavior: They sell dozens of discrete solutions to solve narrowly defined problems.

This piecemeal approach is common across the two fundamental areas that organizations need to connect and protect: external, public-facing infrastructure and internal, private systems (which support remote, hybrid, and branch users). Organizations might buy a web application firewall (WAF) from one vendor, a scrubber for distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks from another, and a VPN from a third.

But purchasing point solutions from multiple vendors can leave you with a chaotic, costly mess of poorly integrated products. Your teams face complex management, vendor lock-in, and a security posture riddled with gaps.

Moreover, when you acquire tools from distinct vendors, you wind up paying a premium. That spending leaves you less budget for more advanced technologies and strategic projects.

How can your organization access all the networking and security capabilities you need for internal and external infrastructure, while ending this long-held practice of piecemeal purchasing? Finding ways to consolidate vendors and seeking out prescriptive product bundles are crucial.

What are the limitations of point solutions for cybersecurity and networking?

A piecemeal approach to networking and security is not sustainable. As networking and security requirements continue to multiply, few organizations can afford to purchase, integrate, and manage a growing collection of disparate point solutions.

Even if you decide to consolidate vendors and buy individual services from a single cloud provider, for example, you might still encounter four key limitations: high total expenses, unpredictable costs, complex management, and poor integration.

High total cost of ownership (TCO)

When you buy numerous point products, total purchase costs add up quickly. And of course, you need to figure in the time and money spent evaluating individual products, negotiating for their purchase, and then deploying and managing multiple tools.

Complicated pricing schemes contribute to higher prices. For example, some networking services charge per-seat costs for remote workers plus bandwidth fees for branch offices. But what happens when your hybrid employees work from a corporate office? You are billed twice: for both their seat license and the bandwidth they consume while in the office.

Unpredictable costs

Many organizations are facing not just higher costs but also unpredictable expenses. Beyond per-seat license fees and fluctuating bandwidth fees, you might incur origin fetch fees, charges for WAF rules, and other miscellaneous costs.

Some vendors also charge their customers for malicious traffic. If your company’s website experiences a large-scale DDoS attack or a rise in AI bots, you could see a sudden increase in your bill. All of this unpredictability makes forecasting and budgeting much more difficult.

Complex management

Managing licenses and billing with multiple vendors is time-consuming — especially if you need to deal with a variety of licensing models, complex purchasing agreements, and frequently shifting terms.

Meanwhile, IT staff must work with multiple products, each with its own interface. And because they lack visibility across networking and security products, they cannot efficiently analyze traffic trends, solve performance issues, address security vulnerabilities, or quickly respond to attacks.

Poor product integration

Bringing disparate solutions together is not easy: Integrating networking and security products from multiple vendors can require significant time and resources. Choosing a platform from a single vendor might be helpful, but it’s no guarantee that all included products and capabilities will be well integrated.

For some vendors, a “platform” is any collection of products and capabilities. But the products in that platform might have been acquired from multiple sources: Your networking and security teams might still need to switch among multiple interfaces and might still lack sufficient visibility across all products.

How does consolidation simplify cybersecurity and networking?

Eliminating the costs and complexity of point solutions requires consolidation. The best approach will involve consolidating both tools and vendors. Whether you are focusing on public-facing infrastructure or internal, private systems, you can benefit from replacing disparate products with a single platform.

Of course, given the tendency of vendors to market any collection of products as a “platform,” finding the right networking and security platform requires careful scrutiny. Above all, look for a vendor and a platform that offers unified services, prescriptive product bundles, and flexibility for change.

Unified platform

A true unified platform should enable your organization to access fully integrated networking and security services from a single interface, eliminating the need to pivot between different consoles.

A security service edge (SSE) platform offers a prime example of how a unified platform can reduce complexity. With the right SSE, you gain zero trust network access (ZTNA), secure web gateway (SWG), data loss prevention (DLP), and cloud access security broker (CASB) capabilities in a single offering. You can consistently protect users and data everywhere.

To consolidate networking functions alongside security, a secure access service edge (SASE) solution is the next step. A SASE solution integrates all the security capabilities of SSE with networking services. The result is a comprehensive, single-stack cloud platform that addresses both security and connectivity challenges. By using this model, your team members can move from one service to the next without ever having to switch tools.

Prescriptive product bundling

Buying a product bundle from a platform provider can give you the benefits of multiple, integrated products and services at a lower price. Still, not all vendors deliver the value they promise from bundles. Some vendors bundle the products they want to sell together — but those might not be products you actually need. You might be stuck paying for products that you’ll never use.

Look for bundles that are prescriptive. The vendor should include products or services that they know will help their customers reduce complexity while addressing particular challenges.

All the products in those bundles should be designed to work together. Like a good meal, all of the elements in a bundle should complement one another. A burger with fries makes sense — a burger with sushi doesn’t.

When choosing a bundle, be sure to choose one that reflects an actual, current use case. For example, choosing a networking and security bundle that divides remote and in-office employees into separate categories will not benefit many organizations.

However, it still might be beneficial to separate internal networking and security from external, public-facing networking and security. You might decide to focus first on improving connectivity for internal users before expanding your efforts to external users. By choosing a bundle that is closely aligned with your desired use case, you can streamline implementation and ongoing management.

Bundle flexibility

One size bundle rarely fits all. Work with a platform vendor that offers bundles in different sizes for each use case or solution area. You should be able to give yourself room to grow without paying for seats that you’ll never use.

Moreover, those bundles shouldn’t lock you into a set of products forever. Just as you want a composable platform, which lets you seamlessly incorporate new services as your needs change, you should choose a bundle that lets you expand when you’re ready.

How can Cloudflare reduce costs and complexity?

Cloudflare’s connectivity cloud is a unified platform of cloud-native services for networking, security, and application development. With Cloudflare, you can streamline operations and simplify security management by accessing all capabilities you need to connect, protect, and build from a single interface.

Cloudflare has also created bundled solution packages to offer prescriptive services at a single price. The Interna and Externa solution packages are designed to address a full range of internal and external security and networking needs. Available in multiple sizes, you can select the size that best fits your requirements now and gain the flexibility to scale in the future. And because Cloudflare does not charge for bandwidth or malicious traffic, you can have predictable bills going forward. You can modernize networking and security while reducing TCO and conquering the complexity that slows innovation.

FAQs

What are the downsides of using multiple point solutions for cybersecurity and networking?

Relying on numerous point products can result in a high total cost of ownership (TCO) and unpredictable expenses. Point solutions also create complexity for managing licenses and billing across different vendors. In addition, they often result in poor product integration, requiring IT staff to switch among multiple interfaces and lacking overall visibility to efficiently solve problems.

How does consolidating cybersecurity and networking solutions help organizations?

Consolidation reduces the costs and complexity associated with disparate point solutions. By replacing separate products with a single, unified platform, organizations gain unified services, prescriptive product bundles, and flexibility for future changes, whether focusing on public-facing infrastructure or internal systems.

What are the limitations of “platforms” that are really collections of products?

Some vendors market any collection of products as a "platform," even if those products were acquired from multiple sources. This can be a limitation because the security and networking teams may still need to switch among multiple interfaces and may still lack sufficient visibility across all the products.

What should an organization look for when choosing a unified networking and security platform?

Organizations should carefully scrutinize vendors and platforms, prioritizing those that offer unified services, prescriptive product bundles, and the flexibility to adapt to change.

What types of costs contribute to the high TCO of managing multiple point products?

The high total cost of ownership (TCO) is a result of total purchase costs for numerous individual products, the time and money spent on evaluating and negotiating those products, and the continuous costs of deploying and managing multiple tools. This is often worsened by complicated pricing models, such as being charged twice for hybrid employees working from a corporate office (for a seat license and for consumed bandwidth).