The news surrounding the slowing economy has many wondering how much of an impact it will have on their businesses – and lives. And there's good reason to start preparing.

A recent survey by McKinsey & Company found that 85% of small and midsize businesses plan to increase their security spending heading into 2023, while Gartner recently projected that 2022 IT spending will only grow by 3%, down from a 10% growth rate the year before.

We're already seeing businesses making cuts and freezing budgets. And smaller organizations that already have limited budgets are more vulnerable than ever. While we are still dealing with the unknown, one thing is clear: even as the economy slows down, security threats don't.

But there's hope.

A new eBook illuminates how one solution can not only help increase security operations efficiency but also provide economic safeguards for security teams that are already strapped for cash.

What is the solution? Consolidation.

If you're evaluating your security strategy and budget for the coming year, here are five reasons why consolidating your security technology stack can help you ensure your organization is safe – no matter what comes our way in 2023.

1 — Be better prepared for economic uncertainty

Smaller organizations that may not have the same cash reserves as their larger counterparts can withstand economic uncertainty by optimizing their security stacks to be cost-effective while still addressing today's sophisticated threats. Replacing multiple vendors and platforms with a consolidated solution that offers the same (or better) capabilities not only reduces direct vendor costs, but also reduces ongoing vendor management and solution maintenance costs.

2 — Improve your security posture

A recent Gartner survey found that 75% of organizations are pursuing security vendor consolidation in 2022, up from 29% in 2020.

But not necessarily for the reason you'd expect – 65% of orgs consolidate to improve risk posture. According to Gartner, "Cybersecurity leaders and their teams are frustrated with the operational inefficiencies and the lack of integration of a heterogenous security stack." Frustrated is probably an understatement here.

And an ESG survey found that the top reasons to consolidate security vendors were to improve operational efficiencies (65%), gain tighter integration of security controls (60%), and improve threat detection (51%).

The key to protection is not more solutions. It's better solutions that can provide an expanded set of protections on a fully integrated platform.

3 — Reduce complexity

Products that natively bring security controls together within a single platform enable tighter, more efficient control over operations unlike buying multiple tools that are cobbled together and operated separately.

Consolidation also provides the benefit of streamlining your vendor management, which is helpful if you need to chase down a software issue or it's time for contract renewals.

A natively integrated solution saves the time and cost of integration while also ensuring data fidelity. Simplified operations and management also result in better decision-making and faster time-to-remediation.

The benefits don't stop there. Having broad coverage of areas and capabilities makes it easier to deliver impactful executive reports and communicate to the C-suite and board the progress, impact, and value of your cybersecurity program.

4 — Offset staffing shortages

While large orgs are fully staffed to operate a broad portfolio of security tools, smaller teams have to take a "lean and mean" approach.

But that doesn't need to come at the cost of security.

Partnering with vendors that enable efficient, streamlined operations while addressing advanced threats means that even lean and mean security teams can implement effective protection for their orgs.

Not only does this save the time and cost of integration, but it also reduces the need to find people with specialized skills to manage multiple, overly complex tools.

5 — Optimize your security spend

An obvious result of vendor consolidation is helping to control costs, and orgs are already realizing this benefit.

A July 2022 survey by ESG found that smaller organizations purchase from fewer vendors: 82% of orgs with fewer than 500 employees buy products from 10 or fewer security vendors, while 50% of organizations with 500-999 employees do the same.

Tools that offer integrated security controls can deliver more capabilities without adding more vendors – optimizing overall spending.

As a bonus, you'll reduce your maintenance and overhead as you spend less time updating multiple products and dealing with separate procurement processes.

Want to learn more about how consolidation can benefit your org? Check out Cynet's eBook, How security consolidation helps small security teams.