Most security discussions are framed around threats. They talk about phishing, ransomware, AI-driven attacks, insider threats, and so on. The primary questions security leaders ask are:
- “Is the organization/business effectively covered against these threats?”
- “Can the business properly protect itself from multiple risk factors?”
Too often, those risk factors are solely threat-focused. However, there’s a major risk that security leaders can’t ignore. Operational risk.
Operational risk can have a major impact on a security department. For example, a lack of operational efficiency can cause even the most capable team to work below its optimum level. That in turn leads to increased risk exposure and slower response times.
Failure to consider operational risks can be the reason why a company falls victim to a data breach or other security incident, despite investment in countless high-tech tools. Operational risk can amount due to a number of reasons. Organizations may not be using the right tools based on their identified risk, not considering their teams’ resource availability, or might be using a tool that doesn’t fit their environment.
“Security leaders often fall into the trap of relying too heavily on reactive measures rather than proactive threat prevention, leading to resource drain and gaps in defense,” says Milos Blata, Director of Sales Engineering at Safetica. “Another common pitfall is failing to prioritize based on risk, resulting in overextended teams and underutilized resources.”
This article shifts the focus from external threats to internal operations, outlining the three core operational risks security leaders must manage if they want their company’s cybersecurity defenses to hold up under pressure.
Operational risk 1: Lack of resources
Many companies simply lack the resources to set up a robust cybersecurity posture. The lack of resources can be in the form of personnel, budget, or even a lack of specialized talent.
Not enough headcount
Understaffing in cybersecurity is widespread. Recent findings show that nearly all CISOs report that their cybersecurity teams are understaffed, citing hiring freezes and budget constraints as the primary causes. The CISOs also say that the lack of staff results in delays and the cancellation of security initiatives.
A staff shortage makes it harder to cover an expanding threat landscape.
Resource gaps can also lead to tool management gaps. Tools alone aren’t enough if you don’t have the people to manage them. Even best-in-class security tooling fails if there’s no one to operate and monitor it. The more complex an environment is, such as in highly regulated industries, the greater this problem becomes.
“One of the most common mistakes is implementing controls without evaluating specific use cases or considering the scope,” says Daniel Garzon, Technical Consultant at Safetica. “The importance of documenting processes and training the team with real-world scenarios is often underestimated.”
Not enough budget
Despite being a top concern in organizations, budget allocations fail to meet the mark. Mimecast’s 2024 cybersecurity report found that a mere 9% of an organization’s IT budget was slated for cybersecurity. Thirty-six percent of the survey’s respondents said that the underspending led to “significant holes” in the organization’s defenses. A further 40% said that the budget constraints led to compromises on the types of tools they could use to monitor threats.
Budget shortfalls translate to security gaps that lead to real-world consequences. At least 15% of companies worldwide have suffered security incidents directly as a result of not investing sufficiently in security tools.
The final casualty of security budget cuts is training. A survey of 600,000 CISOs across Europe, the USA, Australia, and Japan found that 36% of them experienced training cuts, of which 45% experienced a data breach because of those cuts.
When talking about budget, it’s important to talk about opportunity costs and potential losses. In a sense, an adequate budget for cybersecurity is like insurance—you only feel the pain when you don’t have it.
Security leaders must work to properly communicate these risks so management and finance understand them the next time they reassess budgets.
Lack of specialized talent
Lacking specialized talent is often overlooked as a factor. Even companies with a full complement of staff in the cybersecurity section might lack the appropriate skill set to deal with modern attacks. Security teams need to know about AI risks, advanced malware, and new tactics that threat actors are using. Knowledge becomes outdated fast, and it’s getting harder to find that knowledge.
The 2024 Workforce Study by the International Information System Security Certification Consortium (ISC2) found that 64% of cybersecurity practitioners and decision-makers believe that skills gaps are worse than staffing shortages. Additionally, 90% of cybersecurity teams have a skills gap, the study found.
A cybersecurity skills gap adds risk to an organization. IBM reports that skills gaps added $1.76 million to the average cost of a data breach.
As the skills gap continues to grow, potentially reaching 85 million workers by 2030, organizations should adapt and invest in their current teams to ensure knowledge gaps don’t lead to security gaps.
Operational risk 2: Too many tools
All tools require time and resources to properly manage them. Cybersecurity tool sprawl introduces complexity as organizations juggle dozens of standalone solutions. Many of these tools provide overlapping functionality, adding unnecessary expenses that take budget away from more necessary items.
Lack of integration between tools adds time to managing an organization’s security, making security teams less efficient.
“To find the right tool, security leaders should focus on solutions that integrate well with existing systems and workflows, ensuring seamless adoption, and minimizing complexity,” says Blata. “Prioritizing usability, scalability, and automation capabilities over features for the sake of it helps avoid tool overload and reduces unnecessary noise.”
Many security vendors will rarely talk about this because it’s a friction point. The fewer tools a company uses, the fewer sales the vendor gets. Fragmented multi‑vendor environments hinder automation and enforce manual management, forcing teams to cope with rising overhead. However, vendors rarely acknowledge this downside.
“The key is to align the tool with operational goals, not just technical capabilities,” says Garzon. “Assessing integration, the learning curve, and the actual value it brings to the team helps avoid solutions that create more noise than protection.”
Having too many tools leads inevitably to one of two scenarios:
- High-end tool mismatches. Smaller teams end up using a tool designed or built for massive enterprises. You end up spending 80% of your budget on a tool you will only use 40% of.
- Point-solution proliferation. You invest in multiple point solutions that seem to fit smaller teams and budgets, but the tech stack gets bloated. Vendor management then becomes burdensome and your team spends precious time managing tools than using them.
Operational risk 3: Ill-equipped for growth or change
Organizations must ensure that cybersecurity tools and platforms scale in sync with company growth. This must be baked into the strategy, not added as an afterthought.
Forecasting on growth is always challenging, but your vendor should be able to manage things such as:
- Expanding to new locations
- Adding infrastructure
- Major database migrations
- Database upgrades or changes
- Increase in employees
- Increase in device usage
If your vendor can’t handle these changes or requires a new contract to sign every time a shift occurs, you’ll have operational gaps as you scale. Adjusting to these shifts takes more time and requires more conversations than is strictly necessary. In the worst case, you’ll have to change solutions, which leads to other issues.
Knowing that the tools and solutions you have will adapt and grow with your company is a must. Choosing scalable, adaptive platforms, such as unified security platforms, helps achieve this and provide more proactive protection.
Organizations with a unified platform take 72 days less to detect a security incident and 84 days to contain one, says a report from IBM.
Efficiency and a streamlined team should be part of your cybersecurity strategy
A security leader’s first priorities are always risk management, proactive defense, and ensuring they can respond to any incident. However, achieving that is only possible with a capable team, which depends on how fast and efficiently they can perform.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of vendor complexity, tool overload, or mismatched tools. Organizations should, instead, consider tools that prioritize automation, alleviate manual tasks, and provide actionable data, not just data for the sake of data.
“Tool overload tends to fragment visibility and create redundancies,” says Garzon. “Likewise, when multiple vendors are involved, it's critical to establish a clear architecture and define responsibilities.”
That’s why Safetica built its cloud-based, compliance-focused, Intelligent Data Security platform that consolidates tools and resolves the lack of resources security teams inevitably face.
If you’d like to learn more about our platform, reach out to us for a free demo.