Reducing complexity and providing insight into software risk, consolidation is the wave of the application security testing future. 

As the convergence of economic and practical factors increases pressure on organizations to streamline their application security (AppSec) initiatives, consolidation is emerging as a practical solution. Consolidation involves streamlining existing AppSec activities, practices, and solutions with the aim of minimizing complexity and reducing resource inefficiencies to provide a clear and accurate picture of software risk.

Recent survey results from our cosponsored report with the Enterprise Strategy Group, “Cracking the Code of DevSecOps” found that over 70% of organizations surveyed currently use more than 10 AST solutions, making a move to fewer vendors and products very appealing. Gartner further backed this finding, noting that 75% of organizations in their survey were pursuing vendor consolidation in 2022, as opposed to 29% in the 2020 edition of the survey.

What’s driving consolidation?

Complicated and messy AppSec programs are yielding a three-fold problem: undue complexity, unmeasurable or unknown levels of risk for the business, and inefficient resource management. The combined result is a fragmented picture of overall risk for the business and no actionable data to inform pointed steps toward improving their security posture.

In a recent report, “Top Trends in Cybersecurity—Survey Analysis: Cybersecurity Platform Consolidation,” Gartner’s findings arrive at a recommended solution for these challenges: business leaders should consolidate their security vendors to reduce complexity, improve their overall risk posture, and realize the resource efficiencies of managing fewer vendors.

Let’s look more closely at the three key drivers pushing organizations toward consolidation.

Resource inefficiencies

Security tool proliferation translates to increased costs in maintaining, supporting, and licensing existing tech stacks across an organization. Managing multiple tools increases the time and resources needed to deploy and maintain them effectively. It also requires development teams to become proficient in multiple UIs, which creates a drag on productivity and inevitable delays to development cycles. Many of these tools contain similar or overlapping capabilities making it more likely that security teams miss key findings, creating inefficiency in both testing and remediation efforts.

Complexity

More security tools lead to more tests, which in turn translates to more results, a vicious cycle that introduces unnecessary and avoidable complexity into the AppSec environment. Often, these results live within their respective point tools, and developers end up receiving duplicate issues or inefficient/noncontextual remediation guidance, wasting valuable time and resources. Without consolidated and actionable results, duplicative activities are inevitable.

Unknown risk

Security tool proliferation also creates a fractured picture of risk. With critical security results living within disparate point tools, there is no single source of truth, making it nearly impossible for security teams or stakeholders to determine a complete picture of risk for an application—or for the overall business itself. Those responsible for security are faced with the reality that they don’t have an easy way to understand their risk posture at any point in time.

The benefits of consolidation

Reduce AppSec complexity. The effort needed to manage tools, perform maintenance, and integrate tools into existing environments inhibits the ability of an organization to remain productive in strategic development activities. With fewer tools, and therefore less management strain, organizations can minimize complexity in their already-demanding development environment.

Gain visibility into risk posture—and improve it. The proliferation of tools makes it harder for organizations to identify which issues are most pressing, and that makes it difficult to prioritize remediation activity. Instead of more tools, organizations can use the correct tools that provide a single trustworthy source of truth with a comprehensive and actionable view of risk.

Remove the demand on organizations to manage vendors. With fewer contracts and the associated licensing costs, organizations have more time to focus on business priorities. They can minimize maintenance loads and spend less time integrating and adopting solutions from disparate vendors.

How to evaluate your vendor for consolidation

When considering the scope of a consolidation effort, solution viability is clearly an important criterion. Given the complexity of existing development environments, organizations should weigh various considerations when evaluating which vendor they partner with. The right vendor is one that can grow and adapt as your organization matures, allowing you to realize the cost-of-ownership benefits stemming from your consolidation initiative. Considerations should include

• Vision: Will the vendor evolve its portfolio to keep pace with changing development techniques and threats?
• Coverage: Does the vendor offer solutions that can be readily adoptable by development but still serve security teams? Does the vendor have a portfolio of strong AST tools, so you aren’t sacrificing functionality in any core technology?
• Staying power: Does the vendor have the staying power to allow an organization to realize its anticipated ROI?
• Flexibility: Will the vendor provide flexible pricing and licensing to enable the organization to expand at its own pace?
• Openness: Does the vendor have the capability to roll up test findings from multiple products, providing a consistent view into software risk and prioritized findings?

Consolidation with Synopsys

Synopsys offers the most comprehensive portfolio in application security, including market-leading solutions in the “big three”: static application security testing (SAST), dynamic application security testing (DAST), and software composition analysis (SCA). Our open ecosystem provides you with the best of all worlds: a one-stop partner for application security plus the flexibility to use the existing tooling within your development pipelines.

Synopsys provides a complete single source of truth

For organizations struggling to filter through a fragmented picture of risk, Synopsys Software Risk Manager is the answer. It integrates with 125+ third-party tools to enable organizations to flexibly migrate, consolidate, and transition existing and new security tools from multiple vendors. Software Risk Manager aggregates, correlates, and prioritizes issues, so developers know what to fix first, and it summarizes that information using dashboards and trend reporting that span the entire AppSec program.

Synopsys streamlines complex tooling

Security tool proliferation has resulted in increased costs to maintain, support, and license tech stacks, and often, tools have overlapping capabilities. With the strongest AST portfolio in the market (and as a repeat Gartner MQ Leader) Synopsys offers industry-leading SAST, SCA, and DAST tools, delivering everything you need to streamline your security solution toolbox.

Synopsys supports existing security programs

Software Risk Manager serves as a single source for all AST findings and acts as the unifier across heterogeneous environments, all while enabling customers to phase out point tools and introduce new ones on their own timeline.

As growing pressures of practical and economic factors drive organizations to consider consolidation, the importance of vendor selection should not be underestimated. The vendor an organization chooses to partner with greatly impacts the ease, success, and longevity of consolidation efforts.

A seven-time Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ Leader for Application Security Testing, Synopsys has it all: best-of-breed capabilities, a proven track record as an industry leader, and the expertise and staying power an organization needs to be successful. For organizations facing unknown levels of software risk and unnecessary complexity and inefficiency in their AppSec initiatives, working with the right vendor will streamline your AppSec environment, so you can manage software risk before it becomes business risk.

Learn more about why Synopsys is once again a Leader in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for Application Security Testing.

Read the Gartner® MQ Report