When most organizations talk about a security roadmap, the conversation quickly shifts to tech.
What should we buy next? What’s missing from our stack? What’s the newest tool that promises to solve everything?
Here’s the problem: That mindset leads to wasted spend, operational complexity, and underwhelming outcomes.
“A security roadmap isn’t what to buy. A security roadmap is how to think about your environment differently.”
That was my closing thought during our recent webinar, Breaking Down an Attack: Real-Time Detection and Response with Microsoft Sentinel. If your roadmap looks like a product catalog, it’s time to rethink how you're defining success.
Stop solving for tools. Start solving for risk.
It’s common for organizations to accumulate a rat’s nest of security platforms. In fact, a 2024 survey by CDW found:
- Most organizations run between 10 and 19 security tools
- 31% operate between 20 and 49
- 10% juggle between 50 and 99 tools
This leads to real problems:
- Security problems are usually in the gaps
When you rely on disconnected tools, you're left stitching together pieces of the puzzle after the fact. It’s inefficient, and it’s dangerous. A recent CSO Online study found that 90% of organizations use three or more tools just to detect and prioritize vulnerabilities. Over one in five said the biggest challenge was figuring out what to fix first. That’s not a tooling issue. That’s a visibility issue. - Underutilization of existing tools
Most teams don’t suffer from a lack of tools, they just don’t use the tools they’ve paid for. According to the 2025 WalkMe and ASUG report, enterprises waste an average of $104 million per year on underutilized technology and failed IT projects. That’s time and money that could have actually moved the needle—closing gaps and reducing risk in a measurable way. - Alert fatigue and burnout
Security teams are swamped with alerts, too many of which are false positives. Nearly 90% of security teams report being overwhelmed leading to missed genuine threats.
What’s a good roadmap look like?A good security roadmap doesn’t start with a purchase order. It starts with a set of questions:
- What are the threats that matter most to our business?
- What level of visibility do we have across our environment?
- Where are our gaps—in detection, in response, in understanding?
- Are we investing time and money in the right places?
When you start here, your roadmap becomes a strategic plan for how your team prioritizes, responds, and matures over time.
Strategy first. Then the tools.
During the webinar, we demonstrated how Microsoft Sentinel supports better detection and response. But tools like Sentinel only deliver that value when there’s strategy behind them. That means:
- Understanding your environment before tuning your rules
- Correlating signals across security domains instead of working in silos
- Automating where it adds clarity or reduces common manual efforts
Whether you use Microsoft or another platform, the principle stands:
Tools should support your strategy, not define it.
You don’t need more tech to improve your security program. You need a clear way to think about the risks, people, and processes that drive it.
Ready to rethink your security roadmap?
Your next roadmap might not include a single purchase, and that’s okay. A smarter approach might optimize what you already have, refocus your team’s time or maybe even remove tools that aren’t delivering value.
You may not need more tools to improve your security posture, but you do need a smart approach that aligns strategy, risk, and operational reality.
If your current roadmap is driven by purchases instead of priorities, it’s time to reset. We work with security leaders to build programs that make sense for their environment, their team, and their business.
Let’s talk about what that could look like for you.
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