Small and Medium Size Enterprises (SMEs) are a major driver of the U.S. economy, representing as much as one-third of the private sector GDP. However, from a cybersecurity perspective, these organizations are at a disadvantage. Cybersecurity is typically handled by a company’s IT staff, who become quickly overwhelmed by the complexity and operational workload of managing multiple tools in their security stack. Limited budgets, lean IT teams and a lack of technical knowledge make SMEs prime targets for cyberattacks.
These challenges are reinforced by Coro’s recent survey of 500 SME cybersecurity decision makers. The findings show that security professionals struggle to manage the many tools in their security stack and the alerts that they generate.
In fact, more than 73% of security professionals surveyed reported missing, ignoring or failing to act on critical security alerts, with respondents noting a lack of time and staff as the top two reasons. Respondents said they spend more than 4 hours managing their cybersecurity stacks every day, with an average of 11+ different tools in their stack. And they estimate it takes an average of 4+ months for each new tool procured to become operational, with equal time spent on installation, configuration, training staff and integration with their existing security stack.
These results underscore the reality of the cybersecurity industry, which focuses on designing tools to meet the needs of enterprise security programs. These tools fail the SME market profoundly. Enterprise security tools are designed for organizations with large, in-house cybersecurity teams with the time and technical knowledge required to manage and maintain them. Enterprise tools are specialized, and designed to comprehensively mitigate a single, specific threat area. They generate thousands of alerts and provide the feedback required by a finely tuned security stack. They are complex, and time consuming to deploy and manage.
No wonder SMEs are overwhelmed.
Consolidation as a solution
The workload complexity facing security professionals, and the overwhelming demands it places on already limited resources, are driving SMEs to consolidate their cybersecurity tools. Gartner reported on this trend in 2022, noting that 75% of companies planned to move to a consolidated approach rather than use point products.
Consolidated, or all in one, platforms, not only increase visibility and reduce operational workloads, they also help strengthen a company’s security posture. But to date, many approaches have been cobbled together through M&A. A consolidated solution that’s comprised of multiple tools that still don’t talk to each other is just papering over the cracks of the problem. A more radical approach is required.
The way forward: modular cybersecurity platformsÂ
Coro sees a distinct way forward for SMEs. It starts with designing a solution from the ground up to be seamlessly integrated, interoperable, and managed from a single dashboard. It should be easy to operate, and easy to scale as a company’s security needs grow.
With these requirements in mind, Coro recently launched Coro 3.0, the world’s first modular cybersecurity platform. Coro 3.0 consolidates the protection of a company’s six most important areas – cloud apps, endpoints, email, sensitive data, network, and users — into a single, unified platform.
Coro 3.0 supports these capabilities through fourteen distinct security modules, including endpoint protection, EDR, email protection, SASE, data governance (DLP), Cloud apps (CASB), VPN, NGFW, DNS filtering, SOC (MDR), Email encryption, and ZTNA, with additional capabilities to be released over time. Each module is plug and play, activated in seconds with a single click.
Coro’s new platform was designed explicitly with the intention of simplifying security operations and enabling the scalability that SME organizations need, and at a record low cost of ownership.
Each security module is interoperable, seamlessly integrated, and architected with the following advantages:
- One easy-to-use dashboard offers a single pane of glass to consolidate alerts, and easily configure and manage every module
- One easy-to-manage agent for all endpoints eliminates the workload of updating and managing multiple vendors’ agents
- One AI-driven data engine communicates between modules and eliminates blind spots, automatically remediating threats and only surfacing the most critical security events
- One intuitive user interface for every module eliminates the need for extra employee training
- One click easily activates new security modules or turns them off, with no installation required
Coro’s modular cybersecurity platform is a breakthrough for SMEs, empowering companies to strengthen their security posture and reduce operational workloads at the lowest cost of ownership.
Strengthen your security posture todayÂ
Consolidated solutions can help SMEs solve their cybersecurity resource challenges. The most effective platforms are architected from the ground up to work together and simplify deployment, management and configuration. Ultimately, the goal is to reduce the complexity and cost required to build and manage effective cybersecurity programs. After all, SMEs deserve to be just as cyber secure as global enterprises.
