The information age has been a boon to data-driven businesses, but it has also fueled an upsurge in criminal activity. Owing to a patchwork approach to data security, incorrectly configured services, and ambiguity surrounding new cloud security models, IT professionals are experiencing issues with trust and fear related to data security as well. Additionally, as big data gets more widespread and firms collect more client information, their data becomes more difficult to manage, and security flaws such as data silos become a greater threat. This disorganization of data makes it difficult to get the relevant information when you need it, which hurts your ability to extract meaningful insights, patterns, or trends, but most critically, it influences how these organizations provide cybersecurity.

As breaches have multiplied, so have the tools designed to counter them. But despite the proliferation of security tools, breaches still occur. To solve data security concerns, IT professionals are deploying a patchwork of several cybersecurity technologies, but they face a difficult battle because usually these systems are not set up properly, disabling proper communication amongst them. According to Gartner, businesses have deployed these technologies aggressively, with global spending on them anticipated to exceed $124 billion this year.

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How the Use of Cybersecurity Tools Took Off

In the 1990s, when numerous well-known viruses, including "The Melissa," infected tens of millions of PCs, it became clear that cybersecurity was something that needed to be invested in. Now that businesses had a security budget, they had to decide how best to use it to strengthen their defenses. Companies purchased a variety of products to supplement their security specialists. To address all the diverse security requirements that enterprises faced, a wide range of software and hardware solutions emerged in the 1990s.

So if your business needed help with setting up and running a firewall, you could get software. If it needed to keep track of who could access sensitive data, it could be assisted by additional software.

There was always a solution you could purchase to assist with the impending security issue.

Following this process, different security products have emerged over the past 20 years to secure all the various components of enterprise IT stacks. However, the complexity of technology stacks has increased. Enterprises can now use a hybrid cloud strategy where some of their servers are located on-premises and others are located on various clouds. Securing such a complex technology stack has become extremely challenging. To defend against all potential attack routes, organizations tend to deploy too many cybersecurity solutions simultaneously. However, the problem is that all these tools often work independently with no interaction with each other.

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Too many cooks ruin the broth: The impact of multiple uncollaborative security tools

Security experts rely on an ever-expanding range of cyber-defense measures due to the sophistication and frequency of attacks. A Ponemon study highlights that to keep their systems secure, enterprises use an average of 45 distinct cybersecurity solutions, and many deploy even more. Since there are so many options, they frequently conflict with one another. Use of more than 50 tools by security teams makes them 8% less successful at detecting attacks and 7% less effective at responding to them. Multiple isolated security solutions expose businesses to risk.

Additionally, switching between different threat defense tools becomes less feasible for security employees as the armory of unrelated solutions grows. All of these solutions obscure the enterprise's comprehensive understanding of its security state and crucial elements of contextual analysis.

Some of the underlying issues include:

• Conflict in data protection: The likelihood for conflict between different data protection and backup methods is high when there are too many cybersecurity solutions that do not interact. For instance, IT might use SVN to backup files to a file system that has been checkpointed. But what if everything fails? Which gets restored first—the checkpointed file system or the SVN repository?
• No clear big picture: If the cybersecurity solutions are not linked, it is challenging and time-consuming to obtain a comprehensive viewpoint and respond swiftly without switching between consoles and adjusting to every feature offered.
• High response time: Incident analysis and security system maintenance using multiple cybersecurity solutions can be slow. Compatibility issues may also require extra manual work or additional tools.
• Data inconsistency: When multiple cybersecurity solutions serve the same purpose but are not integrated, collaboration becomes difficult. Users may need to label data in multiple locations, often inconsistently, complicating classification and labeling.

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Getting rid of siloed security for improved security posture

Cybercriminals are becoming more sophisticated. They are aware of where to hunt for vulnerabilities in an enterprise's system. One of the best trap doors a fraudster may find is a data silo. Because cybersecurity measures implemented within a system are frequently not integrated, complex attacks spanning multiple network regions are harder to detect. Unless a company has substantial resources to manually identify linked threats, these attacks may go unnoticed.

Black holes within silos imply management teams are less likely to establish uniform security protocols across departments or communicate about potential threats. Fraudsters, hackers, and other cybercriminals exploit these flaws to infiltrate, steal, and exploit data.

As unconnected solutions accumulate, it becomes harder for security specialists to switch between tools. Siloed solutions conceal a transparent view of security status, increasing overhead costs and risk.

Implementing a comprehensive security solution and uniform protocols company-wide is critical to avoid silos.

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How Zaperon nullifies the challenge of cybersecurity solutions working in silos?

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Zaperon is built on the Zero-Trust Model and offers all-inclusive features to replace multiple security solutions used by organizations. Zaperon makes access to applications passwordless and offers a seamless single sign-on experience. Multi-factor authentication provides an additional security layer. Zaperon enables secure remote access to applications from any location and any device without using VPN. AI-based continuous risk analysis provides complete control over the security posture of unmanaged services to prevent malicious actors from penetrating your system and network. Whether it is a SaaS, on-prem, or IaaS application, we can design a single integrated platform to securely access all apps without a hitch.