The Typical Road Blocks in Security Integration

Edge360 began business as a Solutions Integrator. The situations and environments we created solutions for ran into at least one of the following road blocks before we were brought in.

 

Over-Engineered

If your organization is not careful, you could run into a situation of vastly over-paying for what could have been a simple, reasonably priced solution. Integration sounds complicated, because in a sense, it is highly involved. It means linking different systems, different software, hardware, and environments into one. Though, often, there is a way to simplify. If the goal is to solve and not to sell, there are ways to look at a situation holistically and solve for longevity. This is in the best interest of the organization. If integrations are highly complicated and overly engineered in their linkages, they are not sustainable. A successful integration requires thinking into the future, how technology will change and how to ensure augmentation of the system is more than possible.

 

Scrap the Whole Infrastructure

Too often, an enterprise is told they need to completely redesign their security infrastructure. They are spending money to undo what they have spent years to build. We see this a lot in national and international organizations that have many disparate parts or locations. To synchronize the security systems, the organization is advised on a new technology that is robust and modern, which is not inherently a bad thing, but that means that the system the organization has invested years into building is scrapped. That is a lot of money and time wasted. Technology is always growing and changing, and it is necessary to stay up-to-date, but if your system is scrapped any time there is a new one available, your organization will not get out of it what you put into it. Instead, invest in sustainable systems that can grow with you, that are built with updatable components. Allowing yourself to update specific aspects of the whole will give your system the mileage it deserves.

 

Dead-Ends

While it is not necessary to replace a whole system every time a new shiny technology is released, it is necessary to consistently access your system, which parts of the whole have been updated recently and which have not. If this is not an established process for your security management team, you could run into “Dead-Ends”. When security technology becomes too out-of-date, it is more difficult to re-incorporate into a new system. It is much easier to keep a system up to date if you keep tabs on the parts that make up the whole. This is important in complex integrations because one part can affect the others’ effectiveness.