Three quarters of companies would rather do with fewer security providers. It is not the cost but the lack of cooperation that makes companies long for simplicity.

Analyst firm Gartner surveyed 418 companies in North America, Asia and EMEA and found that 75 percent of them want to consolidate to mitigate their risks. However, in 2020, that percentage was still 29 percent.

“Security and risk management leaders are increasingly dissatisfied with the operational efficiency and lack of integration of a heterogeneous security stack,” said John Watts, vice president of an analyst at Gartner. “As a result, they are consolidating the number of security providers they use.”

According to Gartner, 57 percent of them work with fewer than ten security players. Moreover, the number of providers is being reduced, particularly in domains such as secure access service edge (SASE) and extended detection and response (XDR).

This reduction is largely unrelated to a trend toward cost savings. Only 29 percent of them do it to spend less. Watts points out that consolidation is not a good way to save. Those who want to do this would be better off reducing the number of licenses or renegotiating contracts.