Businesses are always thinking about how they can operate more efficiently, but cybersecurity is an area where it’s unwise to cut corners. Attack surfaces are increasing as systems are moved into the cloud, exposing businesses to an increasing variety of threats and threat actors, while the transition towards hybrid and remote working has dissolved the traditional network perimeter.

But there’s a difference between “cutting corners” and allocating resources in the most cost-efficient way. That’s where Extended Detection and Response (XDR) can be a huge benefit. XDR brings together data and alerts from numerous security tools, offering visibility into not just endpoints, but networks, servers, and more. Bringing this together onto a single platform gives a holistic view of your organization’s cybersecurity, making it easier to detect and respond to threats.

Let’s look at three keyways XDR solutions can help reduce costs and make your organization more cost efficient.

Reduce Tool Sprawl and Improve Visibility

The cyber threat landscape is broad and varied, and in response, numerous solutions have been developed to help organizations defend themselves. This can lead to organizations investing in a sprawling array of tools to make sure every base is covered.

However, according to a 2024 survey by KPMG:

  • 55% of security leaders aren’t using all the features their security tech stack has to offer.
  • 28% admit that the tools they’ve purchased are under-resourced in terms of personnel, support services, or deployment.

This kind of tool sprawl obviously wastes money, but it also adds complexity to your security stack, making security teams less efficient and increasing the difficulty of identifying and responding to threats when they emerge.

In contrast, XDR solutions can combat this sprawl by offering comprehensive coverage and visibility across your entire security stack, accessible from one single platform.

A good XDR solution should work with your existing tools and be vendor-agnostic, making it easier to see what capabilities you have at your disposal. Making everything visible via a single interface gives a holistic view of your security posture, as well as making it much easier to make decisions on which tools should be invested in and which aren’t required.

Make Internal Teams More Efficient

One of the biggest security investments made by an organization — particularly large businesses — is its internal security team. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average cybersecurity and information security analyst will earn almost $120k per year and given the current shortage of skilled cybersecurity professionals this figure is only likely to grow.

You need to be making the most of your internal teams. An XDR solution has a huge impact on efficiency because all your data and telemetry are in one place, and allows workflows to be orchestrated and automated, making security processes more efficient and allowing experienced professionals to focus on high-impact work.

As well as having fewer siloed security tools to monitor, the automation functionality of XDR will also help reduce alert fatigue. Multiple inefficient cybersecurity tools can lead to lots of false positives that need to be reviewed, but by reducing these XDR solutions allow security teams to prioritize the most important alerts and be much more productive. XDR solutions can also be configured to respond to certain types of threats automatically, eliminating tasks that would otherwise have had to be done manually.

Minimize the Impact of a Successful Attack

Ultimately the reason to invest in any cybersecurity solution in the first place is to reduce the likelihood — and potential impact — of a successful attack. The cost to an organization of a breach might not be considered a business “overhead” in the traditional sense, but it still represents a critical financial risk.

This makes more effective cybersecurity, like a capable XDR solution, an effective way to reduce the business costs associated with a breach. Having a single source of truth for your entire network, as well as a more productive and efficient in-house cybersecurity team, reduces the cost of breaches in two ways:

  1. Increased visibility means you’ll be better at identifying vulnerabilities in the network, minimizing the chance of a breach being successful in the first place.
  2. Certain threats can be responded to automatically, without any need for manual intervention.
  3. When an issue does require manual intervention, your security team will be faster, more efficient, and coordinated in its response to threats.

This is possible in part because a good XDR solution will leverage AI and machine learning to learn what ‘normal’ looks like over time, ingesting vast amounts of data to get a complete picture of your network. Once it understands what “normal” looks like, it can spot anomalies that might indicate a potential threat. These analytical capabilities grow stronger over time as an XDR platform gathers more and more data.

How Kudelski’s XDR Solution Reduces Costs

The savings from investing in an XDR platform are supported by real-world data. One survey from Cisco found that bringing multiple security functions into a single tool helped reduce the number of vendors needed, with over half of organizations surveyed reporting savings of between $25,000 and upwards of $100,000.

Another study from Forrester projects that the return on investment (ROI) of investing in an XDR solution sits between 43% and 254% over a three year period.

Our industry-leading Managed Detection and Response (MDR) service, MDR ONE Resolute, is powered by our FusionDetect™ XDR platform.

FusionDetect creates a central collaboration point where the Security Operations Center, incident response team, Chief Information Security Officer and others can access a single source of truth without duplicating or moving data to work on it. Our portal offers a single interface for complete visibility across your entire network.

What’s more, our XDR solution offers:

  • Faster time to value by removing the need for complex SIEM deployments and seamlessly integrating with your existing security tech stack.
  • Scalability at a predictable price, with costs linked to the number of endpoints—not the volume of data—which means you don’t have to compromise between data storage and security objectives.
  • Integrations with upwards of 140 tools to help you get most of the capabilities you’re paying for.

To find out more about the benefits of MDR ONE Resolute, powered by FusionDetect™, contact our expert team today.

Alternatively, check out Forrester’s “The Total Economic Impact™ of Kudelski Security’s Managed Detection and Response (MDR) Services Study” to find out the quantitative cost savings and business benefits of Kudelski Security MDR.