Security teams are managing too many tools, and it’s creating more problems than it solves.
Every year brings new threats, and organizations respond the same way: they buy another specialized tool. Ransomware attacks increase, so they add ransomware-specific defenses. Remote work becomes the norm, so they purchase VPN solutions. Cloud adoption accelerates, so they add cloud security platforms.
Over time, your security stack becomes a collection of point solutions layered on top of each other, each purchased to solve a specific issue without much consideration for how it fits into the broader architecture. This reactive approach is understandable given the pace of threats, but it leads to environments where tools don’t communicate well, data sits in silos, and your team spends more time managing technology than addressing actual security concerns.
Each decision makes sense in the moment and addresses a real problem. But collectively, these purchases create a fragmented security infrastructure that’s harder to manage and more vulnerable than it should be.
What Complexity Actually Costs
The licensing fees are significant, but they’re not the biggest expense. The real costs show up in operations.
1. Integration challenges – Each new tool needs to fit into your existing infrastructure, which often means dealing with APIs that don’t quite work together, data formats that need translation, and authentication systems that don’t align. Deployments that should take weeks stretch into months-long projects.
2. Alert overload. – When every tool generates its own alerts through different channels, security teams struggle to distinguish meaningful warnings from noise. Analysts receive hundreds of alerts daily, making it impossible to investigate everything thoroughly. Important threats get buried in the volume.
3. Stretched expertise – Your security team can’t be experts in dozens of different products. Organizations face a choice between hiring specialists for each tool (expensive and difficult in a market with talent shortages) or having existing staff learn enough to keep things operational (which spreads knowledge thin and increases the risk of misconfigurations).
4. Administrative overhead – Managing multiple tools means tracking updates, patches, license renewals, vendor relationships, and ongoing training. This administrative work pulls security teams away from their primary responsibilities.
This complexity creates security gaps. When systems don’t integrate properly, threats slip through the cracks between tools. Having too many platforms makes configuration errors become more likely, and alert fatigue leads to missed critical warnings. The cumulative effect often weakens their overall posture.
Why Vendors Build Complex Products
Security vendors don’t deliberately make products complicated, but complexity aligns well with certain business models. Complex tools often require extensive professional services for implementation, ongoing consulting for optimization, and specialized training programs for staff. These services generate substantial recurring revenue beyond initial license fees.
Complexity also makes switching difficult. Once an organization invests heavily in learning a platform, migrating data, and building processes around it, changing vendors becomes a major undertaking. This creates strong customer retention even when the tool isn’t delivering expected value.
Some vendors position complexity as a feature, suggesting that more configuration options and technical depth indicate enterprise-grade capability. But good security tools work effectively in your environment, integrate reasonably with existing systems, and can be managed by your actual team without requiring dedicated specialists.
What Effective Security Actually Requires
Instead of measuring security by how many tools you have, measure it by how well your security functions.
Consolidate where possible. Look for platforms that handle multiple security functions competently rather than buying specialized point solutions for every threat. Your team can develop genuine expertise instead of surface-level familiarity across dozens of products.
Prioritize usability. Security tools should be manageable by your existing team without extensive training or dedicated specialists. Products that require constant expert intervention create ongoing operational burdens.
Expect real integration. Security tools should work together without requiring extensive custom development or specialized integration projects. They should share data naturally and provide unified visibility into your security posture.
Consider privilege management. Organizations often end up with overlapping tools that each handle a piece of the problem, requiring multiple consoles, vendor relationships, and integration work to get everything functioning together.
Admin By Request EPM handles privilege elevation and approval workflows in a single platform. Users can elevate privileges when needed, administrators can approve or deny requests, and all activity gets logged automatically. The system works whether endpoints are online or offline.
Our Secure Remote Access solution provides browser-based access to internal systems without VPN tunnels. IT teams can support users remotely, access servers without user intervention, and provide vendors with temporary, scoped access to specific systems.
Both solutions are designed to be straightforward to deploy and manage, without requiring extensive infrastructure or specialized expertise.
Getting Out of Tool Sprawl
If you’re already managing too many tools, start by auditing what you actually have. Don’t just list what you’re paying for, identify what your team actually uses and trusts. You’ll likely find tools that were deployed once and forgotten, or products that are technically running but nobody relies on.
Look for functional overlap. How many tools are addressing essentially the same problems? Where are you paying multiple vendors for similar capabilities?
When evaluating new solutions, ask harder questions. Does this integrate with our existing tools? Can our current team manage it without extensive training? Will it create more work or less? What’s the total cost of adding this to our environment, not just in licensing but in operational overhead?
Simple Works Better
There’s a misconception that simpler security tools are less powerful. But simpler tools often work better in practice because teams actually use them correctly. When your security staff can understand, configure, and manage a solution without specialized training, they’re more likely to implement it properly and maintain it consistently.
Simpler architectures also fail more predictably. Complex systems with numerous interdependencies break in ways that are difficult to diagnose and fix. Straightforward architectures are easier to troubleshoot and faster to recover when problems occur.
Good security comes from tools that work reliably, integrate sensibly, and can be managed by real teams with realistic resources. If you can deploy a solution across thousands of endpoints in days rather than months, and users can figure it out without extensive training, you’ll actually achieve the security benefits you’re paying for.
Admin By Request’s Zero Trust Platform is built on this principle. Our EPM and Secure Remote Access solutions are straightforward to deploy and simple to manage. Try our free plan for up to 25 endpoints, or book a demo to see how we can improve your security posture.
