Cybersecurity spend: are you paying for overlapping tools?

Many multi-location businesses accumulate overlapping cybersecurity tools, two or more products covering the same threat, plus over-licensed seats, as each site or IT hire adds its own preferred stack. Consolidating overlap reduces cost without reducing protection, and is one of the most overlooked technology savings categories.

Ranges reflect industry benchmarks; actual results vary and savings are not guaranteed.

How does security tool sprawl happen?

Cybersecurity spend rarely gets rationalized. A new IT lead brings a preferred endpoint tool. One location buys its own email security. A compliance push adds another scanner. Nobody removes the old tools, so coverage overlaps and seats outnumber actual users.

The scale of the problem is well documented. A 2025 study by the IBM Institute for Business Value and Palo Alto Networks found organizations manage an average of 83 different security tools from 29 different vendors (IBM & Palo Alto Networks, via Cybersecurity Dive). The market has noticed: a Gartner survey found 75% of organizations were pursuing security vendor consolidation in 2022, up from just 29% in 2020 (Gartner, 2022). Notably, most of those organizations were consolidating to improve their risk posture and operations, not just to cut spend. Overlap is a security problem as much as a cost problem, because every extra console is another place alerts go to die.

Which security tool categories overlap most?

Overlap concentrates where product categories have grown into each other. The five below account for most redundant security spend, alongside the perennial duplicates in email security and identity/MFA.

Two patterns explain most of the table. First, platform creep: XDR grew out of EDR, SASE swallowed the web gateway, VPN, and CASB markets, and productivity suites added security features that duplicate standalone tools. Second, multi-location buying: each site or acquired company arrives with its own stack, so a five-location business can easily run three endpoint agents and two MFA products. The classic quick checks are still endpoint protection (more than one agent per machine), email security (a standalone tool duplicating what your platform includes), identity/MFA (different products by location), and over-licensed seats (paying for more users than you employ).

How do you consolidate without creating coverage gaps?

The fear that stops most consolidations: “what if we cut something that was protecting us?”, is answered by mapping before cutting:

1. Inventory everything. List every security tool, its seat count, its annual cost, and its renewal date across all locations, including modules bundled into suites you already own.
2. Map each tool to the threats and controls it covers. A simple grid of tools versus control areas (endpoint, email, identity, network, data, logging) makes overlaps and genuine gaps equally obvious.
3. Pick the strongest tool per control area, judged on detection quality, integration with the rest of your stack, and total cost, not on which vendor shouts loudest.
4. Run the overlap in parallel briefly. Deploy the surviving tool everywhere and confirm it is reporting before the redundant one is switched off. Never turn off the old control the day the new one is installed.
5. Decommission and right-size. Cancel the losing tools at renewal, cut seats to actual headcount, and renegotiate the consolidated contract with the volume you have just concentrated on one vendor.

Done in that order, consolidation tends to improve security while cutting spend. The IBM/Palo Alto study found organizations that consolidated onto integrated platforms identified security incidents 74 days faster and contained them 84 days faster on average, and generated four times greater ROI from their security spend (IBM & Palo Alto Networks, via Cybersecurity Dive). Since most security tools are subscriptions, the same usage-and-renewal discipline that drives SaaS spend optimization applies directly here.

Two situations deserve extra care. In multi-location businesses, standardize one stack across all sites rather than consolidating site by site: pick the surviving tool per category once, then migrate locations on a schedule, retiring each site’s legacy contracts at their natural renewal dates to avoid early-termination fees. And if you use a managed security provider (MSP or MDR), check what tooling is already bundled into their service before buying anything standalone. A surprising amount of overlap is between tools you license directly and tools your provider already licenses on your behalf. Ask the provider for a list of the products included in your agreement and add them to the inventory in step one.

What are the compliance and cyber-insurance implications?

Consolidation worries compliance owners because audits reward stability. But frameworks such as SOC 2, ISO 27001, and HIPAA test whether controls exist and operate, not which brand of software delivers them. An auditor needs to see that endpoints are protected, logs are retained, and access is controlled, not that you kept a specific product. To swap tools cleanly: document the control-to-tool mapping before the change, keep evidence continuous through the transition (this is exactly why you run the tools in parallel), update your system description and policies, and tell your auditor about material changes before the audit rather than during it.

Cyber insurance works the same way. Applications and renewal questionnaires ask about control categories: MFA everywhere, EDR on endpoints, backups, email filtering, and answering them accurately matters because misstatements can jeopardize claims. Consolidation only becomes a problem if a capability quietly disappears in the shuffle; the threat-mapping grid above is your protection. In practice, a consolidated stack often makes both audits and insurance renewals easier: fewer tools means fewer consoles to evidence, fewer vendors to security-review, and a clearer story about who covers what. If a consolidation touches network security or SASE, coordinate it with your SD-WAN and connectivity decisions, since the same vendors and contracts are usually in play.

Where does this fit in your overall technology spend?

Consolidating overlap cuts cost while keeping coverage, you are removing redundancy, not protection. Cybersecurity is one category in a full SaaS, telecom & vendor cost review, and a technology spend assessment will inventory security tools and seats alongside software, telecom, and cloud so the consolidation decisions get made with the whole picture in view.

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By Shane Stewart, Founder of Stackstone Advisory, independent technology spend advisor.
Last updated: July 2026.