For years the gold standard in IT was considered the “best-of-breed” approach: firewalls from one vendor, endpoint protection from another, email security from somewhere else.
While this approach worked for many years, cyber security has changed. Many organisations are now reassessing their approach with the help of specialist Microsoft Cyber Security Consultancy services to move toward more unified, integrated protection.
Silos and blind spots
When you’re juggling multiple different security vendors, you’re creating a siloed operation lacking data driven intelligence. Products from different vendors rarely integrate perfectly; if one product sees a suspicious login and another a file download, these events may not be correlated, leading to blind spots. This is often revealed during structured Cyber Security Assessments that highlight gaps in visibility across siloed tools.
The hidden costs of fragmented systems
Integrating products from different vendors often requires middleware, introducing complexity which can be challenging and costly to maintain when a vendor updates their product. Disparate security tooling puts organisations at an operational deficit. Not only are there multiple products to manage but teams responding to security incidents are slowed down by having to juggle multiple platforms at once. Many organisations address this challenge through targeted Cyber Security Workshops that map existing tools and identify opportunities for consolidation.
Breaking down silos with Microsoft Defender XDR
Using a unified security platform such as Microsoft Defender XDR breaks down the walls, allowing for a security solution that can keep up with today’s fast-paced threat landscape. Solutions like Extended Detection and Response (XDR) bring signals together across endpoints, identities, email and cloud workloads.
The Microsoft Defender suite of products and Microsoft Sentinel Services analyse more than 100 trillion signals per day to provide threat intelligence and proactively stop threats. When combined with Defender for Cloud, organisations gain unified visibility across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.
Integration is the new best-of-breed
So, is the best-of-breed approach dead? No, it has simply evolved along with the security landscape. Today best-of-breed refers to the best integrated platform. Security is a team sport; if your tools aren’t on the same team, you’re playing with a disadvantage. This integrated approach is often underpinned by solutions such as Microsoft Purview Data Governance, ensuring consistent protection and compliance across the estate.
To find out how your organisation could benefit from a unified cybersecurity platform, explore our Microsoft Cyber Security Consultancy services or reach out to us below and we’ll help you go from siloed to seamless.
Cyber Security Consultancy
Our Microsoft security consulting helps organisations design, deploy and manage enterprise-grade protection across the Microsoft security stack.
How AccountsIQ Scaled its Security
Since onboarding to our SOC, they’ve seen a 38% increase in Microsoft 365 Secure Score, 46% fewer security alerts, and zero critical vulnerabilities, all with a 100% SLA performance.
