Three Switching Costs to Consider When Evaluating a New Vulnerability Management Solution

Ah, vulnerability management. There are some great solutions out there—as well as some not-so-great solutions. If you’re using the latter, convincing your organization to switch to a better one can be a very daunting task, to say the least, given the high financial and operational costs.

Maybe you’re looking to switch to a better solution because your false-positive rate is so high that your IT team is wasting time on non-issues and it’s painting you in a bad light. Or, maybe you’re unhappy with the level of partnership and support your current provider offers. Or, perhaps it’s just too expensive for what you’re getting out of it, and you’re ready to shop around (Psst! You can check out the pricing of our vulnerability management solution right here if interested).

If you’re looking to switch vulnerability management solutions, read on as we walk you through the three areas to consider and how to communicate them to get buy-in from leadership.

1. Financial switching costs

It’s important to seek out a vendor with a proven ROI who is willing to partner with you to develop a strong business case to switch. With ROI numbers in hand, decision-makers can more easily validate whether the switch is worth it. Seek a vendor with a proven ROI from an independent study, and it will carry serious weight in that decision-making process. For example, Forrester found in its recent Total Economic Impact study that Rapid7’s InsightVM can provide customers with a 342% return on investment over just three years.

2. Operational switching costs

Money isn’t the only factor when it comes to switching costs. The reality is that your current vulnerability management solution is likely already quite integrated across your tech stack. Your security, IT, and development teams are used to how it works and have processes in place, which means there is a significant operational cost to switching.

Switching would require onboarding a new solution, retraining people, setting up new integrations, and more. Put simply, you’ll need a clear case for why this is a worthwhile investment of time and effort. If you can show your stakeholders data that supports reduced false positives and saved time and money, that can go a long way. For example, Forrester reported that InsightVM has a 22% reduction in false positives due to more accurate data, which saves companies a significant amount of time every single day.

You may also want to point out patching efficiencies you stand to gain. Forrester found that InsightVM netted a 60% reduction in manual patching efforts due to patching automation and reduced workflows.

If the vendor(s) you’re considering have a track record of going above and beyond to provide training, onboarding, deployment, and support services, including helping you set up integrations with your existing tech stack, this can offset operational costs (and possibly net a gain) both upfront and in the long run.

3. Cultural switching costs

The final cost to consider is the cultural cost. You may already have a tough enough time convincing remediation teams to prioritize security in general, so if you’re about to propose ripping out your entire vulnerability management solution and replace it with a new one, you have to be clear that it will actually simplify their routines and reduce complexity. Otherwise, be prepared for people to push back because they don’t want to learn something new or don’t (yet) understand what’s wrong with the current solution. If the new solution alleviates a lot of their time and challenges, though, it can be a huge win to them and to you.

For example, if the vendor you’re evaluating can automatically create a remediations report that narrows in their focus, offers a step-by-step remediation process to save them time and hassle, or supersedes the work other solutions you have in place do (or that your team does manually), that can be a huge win and a big time saver.

Make your case with a vendor who can guide you

When you’re evaluating different vendors in the space, you should be looking for a vendor that can offer true partnership and is willing to help you build a strong business case, as well as help you through the logistics of getting a new solution in place and setting you up for success.

If you’re considering InsightVM, features like our Top 25 Remediations Report helps you see and address the highest priority vulnerabilities, ensuring you’re measurably reducing risk every day. Then there are Remediation Projects, which integrate directly with your ticketing systems (i.e ServiceNow and Jira) to seamlessly track remediation and take a lift off your IT team. Being able to integrate with solutions your IT team already uses will increase the likelihood that they’ll support your initiative to move to a new solution.

The lightweight endpoint Insight Agent makes installing and integrating it simple and fast, and Automation-Assisted Patching replaces a traditionally tedious and time-consuming task with an automated hands-off process so your team can regain hours back in their day. Learn about some of our most powerful InsightVM features here.

While we recognize that it can take time to gain internal buy-in to switch vendors, when you have specific proof points and benefits that speak to each switching cost, it can ease the process and make it go smoother. Working with a partner who can help you articulate these points to each group can help ease your load and successfully bring on a solution that will make everyone’s jobs easier.