Become Free From Vendor Lock-in

Welcome to the July edition of Streamlined by D3 Security. This month, we will focus on how security leaders find it challenging to move to new, innovative tools because of their investment in their current stack.

Cybersecurity leaders are some of the more tech-savvy professionals one comes across. Still, they sometimes find themselves in a tricky situation when looking at new tools. Even when they see value, they don’t always switch. Let’s explore some of the reasons why leaders feel hesitant to add or replace security tools.

Integration with Existing Systems

Ensuring interoperability within your security stack is crucial for the effective implementation of security solutions. This is especially important when deploying security automation tools, as one of their primary objectives is to reduce workload. Often, organizations find themselves needing to maintain and develop custom integrations to ensure cohesive operation across their stack, which typically requires dedicated in-house engineers focused on the development and maintenance of the platform. Consequently, it becomes a lengthy and cumbersome process to reach the point where the tools can deliver true value.

By the time this is accomplished, leadership is often too invested to consider transitioning to newer, superior tools, fearing the need to repeat the entire setup process. This stems from the significant time and resources already committed, making the idea of starting over especially intimidating.

Vendor Dependence and Support

Regardless of how robust a security tool is, teams will occasionally encounter issues or have product-related questions that necessitate contacting the vendor's support team. This can present significant challenges. Many vendors with multiple product lines lack specialist support teams dedicated to individual solutions, resulting in interactions with general support professionals who may not possess the required knowledge to provide adequate assistance. Over time, teams learn to collaborate effectively with their vendors to resolve their issues. Once this comfort level is established, switching to a new vendor becomes less appealing.

Onboarding and Setting up

Whenever a new solution is introduced to a security team's stack, it comes with its own challenges. Onboarding requires careful migration of data, configurations, and workflows, which can be complex. Setting up the tools involves configuring them to fit existing security needs and integrating them smoothly with current IT systems. This process often demands specialized knowledge, possibly requiring professional services for deployment, configuration, and customization. Training staff is crucial for maximizing tool effectiveness and operational efficiency. Balancing implementation timelines with ongoing security operations is critical to minimize disruptions and maintain security posture. Many organizations find that vendors bill them almost as much for professional services as they do for the tool itself. This significantly reduces the appeal of adopting a new solution.

What’s the Solution?

Conducting a comprehensive needs assessment and tool evaluation is crucial, followed by developing a detailed transition plan with well-defined timelines and milestones. Once the requirements are identified, it's essential to evaluate not only the technological aspects but also the vendor's brand values. A strong vendor-customer relationship hinges on customer-focused service and a commitment to innovation. This approach ensures that leaders choose vendors who align not just technically but also philosophically with their organizational goals, fostering long-term success and satisfaction in their cybersecurity endeavors.

Smart SOAR: Break Free?

One of the key qualities of Smart SOAR is its ease of use. We want you to focus on taking down the threats to your infrastructure so we offer you clean, simple, and efficient security automation.?

We achieve this by:

• Offering unlimited out-of-the-box integrations. If we don’t have the integrations you need, we develop them and maintain them for you, always at no additional cost.
• Having a SOAR specialist on the other side, anytime you have a question for us. Our support team is the one-stop shop for all things SOAR.?
• We help you every step of the way when onboarding you to Smart SOAR and provide you all the support you need to be successful, even after the implementation is complete.

How Do We Do It?

D3 Security is focused on one thing: Smart SOAR. We have the largest independent SOAR development team in the world, which affords us the ability to design solutions for security teams that are simple to implement and run efficiently. We are committed to becoming the largest SOAR vendor and we plan to achieve it by offering the best security automation solution to cybersecurity teams around the world.

Top Picks from the D3 Blog:

1. D3 Is Security Automation that Makes Your Team Better
2. Understanding SOC Models: A 5-Minute Guide to Staffing, Technology, and Operations

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About D3 Security

D3 Security’s Smart SOAR? helps solve many of the most entrenched problems in cybersecurity—including analyst burnout, alert overwhelm, and information silos—by transforming separate tools into a unified ecosystem with multi-tier automation, codeless orchestration, robust case management, and environment-wide reporting. Smart SOAR performs autonomous triage and drastically reduces false positives so that enterprise, MSSP, and public sector security teams can spend more time on real threats.?