Webinar Recap: Tool Sprawl - The Trillion Dollar Problem in Cybersecurity

Christian Wiens Director of Marketing

Christian Wiens is Director of Marketing at MixMode. He has 10+ years of experience as a cybersecurity professional. He has his BA from The University of California, Berkeley and resides in Austin, TX.

Thank you to all who joined our recent webinar, “Tool Sprawl – The Trillion Dollar Problem in Cybersecurity.”

In partnership with 5Q, our 60-minute talk was hosted by MixMode’s Head of Federal, Matt Shea, and former CISO of CBRE and Current CEO of 5Q, Don Goldstein. They discussed key topics including:

The big business of cybersecurity tools
The many problems with tool sprawl
The advancing threat landscape
The benefits of tool consolidation and adaptability

We pulled together a few key quotes from the webinar that highlighted this discussion. It is now available on-demand for anyone to view here.

“It isn’t always about additive services, sometimes it’s about replacing services. The problem with this kind of spend is: Are companies spending this money because a new threat comes along and they need something to fill that gap and protect against these new threats? Or, are they maximizing what they already have in place? What percentage of what they have is actually in use?”
– Don Goldstein, CEO at 5Q

The panelists shared that for CISOs sitting in the cyber leadership position, when new systems, platforms, and services are being procured, are they being procured while looking at the whole picture? Or is it a one-off purchase for a single problem or squeaky wheel like, for example, identity management or SIEM?

“We’re at the point where the impact of cybersecurity events are reaching everyday lives. Gas prices go up with a pipeline hack, prices for deli meat at the grocery store goes up when a meat packing plant is attacked. Everywhere from the government to the C-Suite of companies, the first lever that they have is to throw some more dollars at the problem and get more resources added.”
– Matt Shea, Head of Federal at MixMode

“There is a trend of consolidation. From a Federal and DOD perspective, they need to reduce tools. Part of that is because of budget, but operationally they can’t have so many tools that you’re moving a pipeline of information around and having analysts trying to find threats and respond fast enough. You have to consolidate. The DOD calls it “12 in 12.” Getting down to 12 tools in 12 months.”
– Matt Shea, Head of Federal at MixMode