When is Security Vendor Consolidation a Good Idea?

Security vendor consolidation has become a common mandate. According to the IANS 2025 Security Software and Services Benchmark Report, roughly 70% of surveyed CISOs have consolidated, or are consolidating, onto unified platforms. 

Netcraft consistently hears from customers that consolidation is less about wanting fewer capabilities than wanting less friction. Teams are under pressure to simplify vendor portfolios, reduce dashboard switching, and test whether their current commercial arrangements still offer good value. Those conversations do not necessarily signal dissatisfaction with a specialist that is delivering strong results.

The question is therefore not simply how many vendors to keep. It is which capabilities matter most, and whether they can deliver measurable outcomes within a more manageable security stack.

Organizations looking to consolidate vendors usually want to reduce operational complexity, review fewer dashboards, administer fewer vendor contracts, and gain greater leverage in renewal negotiations. A much smaller number believe their existing tool is underperforming.

Consolidation isn’t necessarily a solution for all of these problems. Integration work, for example, can help address dashboard fatigue, while procurement solves contract overhead.

The important question is whether consolidation removes friction without removing capability the security program still needs.

When does it make sense to consolidate cybersecurity vendors?

There are a few situations in which consolidating elements of the security stack is the best solution.

If security vendor coverage overlaps and a single platform can cover those core features without major gaps, there’s no point in wasting budget or creating unnecessary tool sprawl with multiple solutions that do the same thing.

Consolidation is also a workable solution for tools that perform administrative or commoditized tasks, where the work is standardized and the outcome depends on how the tool is configured rather than on the data and expertise behind it. Automation is not the dividing line. Detection engines that combine machine learning with expert-written rules and proprietary threat data are automated too, and they are harder to reproduce. A broader platform may provide strong capability in a particular category, but buyers should still verify whether its data, detection accuracy, response processes, and operating outcomes match the specialist capability it would replace.

Moving to a unified platform should also reduce total cost, not only vendor count. Migration, retraining, and rewriting integrations are one-time expenses, and they are the ones most often modeled. The replacement carries its own running costs: licensing, implementation, integration maintenance, and the analyst effort required to work the new tooling day to day. Consolidation makes sense when both sets of numbers come in below what the broader stack costs today.

If a standalone specialist cannot show a unique contribution or a better return on investment (ROI) than the version included in a broader suite, its cost is harder to defend. That test cuts both ways. Every vendor, whether a specialist or a broader platform, should demonstrate the value it adds. Compare measurable security outcomes, operational effort, integration quality, and total cost rather than assuming that an included feature is an equivalent replacement.

When do best-of-breed tools make sense?

The one thing to keep in mind, however, is that detection accuracy and analyst judgment built over years inside one problem space do not transfer into a generalist platform as a feature. 

Say you’re looking at two vendor homepages, one for a unified platform and another for a best-of-breed cybersecurity product. Both claim, for example, a brand protection solution.

Those capabilities may not produce the same results, even if they appear similar on a comparison page. The difference can sit in the data history, analyst expertise, infrastructure access, and external relationships behind the feature.

Feature parity, in other words, does not necessarily mean parity in outcome.

What does a best-of-breed tool have to do to earn its place?

You don’t need a best-of-breed security technology in every category. But the ones you do keep must perform measurably and integrate cleanly into the rest of the stack.

Customers tell Netcraft they do not need a best-of-breed product in every category, but they do need the specialists they retain to perform in the areas that matter most and to integrate cleanly with the rest of the stack. That is a different requirement from asking one vendor to do everything.

When reading arguments for consolidation, you’ll see the same point come up, over and over again: coverage gaps arising from tools failing to talk to one another. But consolidation isn’t the only solution; strong integrations can solve this problem too, without forcing organizations to give up the best-of-breed capabilities they need.

A specialist that cannot integrate is contributing to the friction that started the consolidation conversation in the first place. The same applies if it can’t demonstrate what it contributes beyond the capability already included in a broader platform.

Some specialist capabilities also depend on resources that cannot simply be recreated through configuration. Netcraft, for example, has more than 100 relationships with hosting providers and registrars, alongside integrations that connect its brand protection data with the wider security stack.

Through Fraudcasting, Netcraft also distributes malicious URL intelligence to major browser anti-phishing programs and security vendors, helping restrict access to threats while takedown proceeds.

That’s the standard a specialist has to meet: A measurable reason to keep the capability, without creating unnecessary friction.

The cost of consolidating the wrong capability 

Organizations consolidate cybersecurity solutions to save money and reduce complexity. Granted, these are both legitimate objectives, but the saving only makes sense if the capability holds with it.

Replace three overlapping tools with one that does the same job and you’ve removed cost and complexity. Replace a specialist with a platform that misses more or responds more slowly and you’ve moved the cost somewhere else. It may not show up on the vendor list, but it will show up in the security program.

Using consolidation as a blunt instrument to solve complex problems like tool sprawl, vendor lock-in, and coverage gaps in the attack surface doesn’t always eliminate costs. While there are benefits of vendor consolidation, it’s not always the right solution.

To determine whether consolidation is the right solution for you, ask yourself two questions: does the consolidation remove friction or capability? And will you be able to tell the difference in twelve months?

Both questions are easier to answer if you measure before you cut. Record what the specialist delivers now: detection volume, accuracy, time to takedown, false positive rate, analyst hours. Run the replacement against that baseline while the specialist is still in p3lace, then keep measuring for two quarters after the switch. Without a baseline, the cost of consolidating the wrong capability only becomes visible once it has already been paid.

Netcraft’s threat detection and takedown platform shows how a specialist function can combine external relationships with integrations into the wider security stack.