The ultimate question when considering a big business purchase (or any purchase, really): Is this going to be worth the cost and effort?

Recently, ReliaQuest commissioned a Forrester® Total Economic Impact™ (TEI) study to find out exactly what the financial and operational impact adopting the ReliaQuest Open-XDR-as-a-Service platform can have on a business.

Using Forrester’s TEI methodology, the report found that the ROI of ReliaQuest is 350% over 3 years with a payback of less than 6 months, in addition to providing numerous other benefits, financial and otherwise.

Below are some of the most interesting findings on how ReliaQuest can positively impact a business in terms of cost, staffing, and overall security posture.

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Cost savings

Investing in cybersecurity can positively impact a business in many ways, but perhaps most important is the bottom line. Security leaders are responsible for communicating the value of the tools they’re devoting budget to, and they’re under pressure to show a solid return.

The TEI study showed that ReliaQuest provides cost savings in multiple areas, from reducing the need for additional headcount to reducing tool sprawl.

Avoiding additional headcount: $1.2M

One of the main benefits of working with ReliaQuest, according to interviewees for the TEI study, is the ability to offload certain SOC tasks to an external team. For example, one of the most time-consuming, tedious responsibilities for any security team is the creation and maintenance of detection rules and content.

The TEI study estimated that an organization would need “a dedicated team of eight employees for Tier 1 security support” at $50k annually per member in order to replicate the value of a ReliaQuest investment. In addition to this team, they would need two employees at $100k each to “perform maintenance and analysis on their established solutions.” After adjusting for risk, Forrester estimated a three-year savings of over $1.2 million.

According to one of the organizations interviewed, “To achieve the value that we are getting with ReliaQuest we would need to buy new tools or hire new team members to recreate these capabilities.”

Retiring legacy tools: $440K

Over time, organizations tend to amass several security tools. But many are underutilized or not at all but security teams do not have a clear view into what can be removed and which ones are contributing to the wellness of the organization.

The Forrester study revealed that organizations were able to scale back their investments in security technologies because they were made redundant by the ReliaQuest offerings. Over a three-year period, this benefit to the composite organization created more than $440K in savings.

The companies were also able to avoid purchasing or eliminate existing tools for threat intelligence or breach and attack simulation because all those services were wrapped into the ReliaQuest purchase.

Force-multiplying security teams

The Forrester study showed that companies saw huge improvements in efficiency of tools, people, and process. Another less-tangible benefit: cyber insurance brokerage firms were more likely to look favorably on companies that had implemented ReliaQuest, resulting in lower insurance premiums.

Reduction in false positives: 90%

When you’re working with just a SIEM and a default rule set, the sheer number of alerts coming your way can be overwhelming. This firehose of telemetry can make it nearly impossible to distinguish real threats from false positives.

With ReliaQuest services, organizations can expect a drastic decrease in their false-positive rate, according to the study. As one interviewee shared, “There is a significant cost savings associated with [the reduction in false-positive rate].” In fact, Forrester estimated a savings of just under $350,000 in three years.

Improved incident response: 50% MTTR

According to interviewed customers, one of the key advantages of implementing ReliaQuest was automation. By automating the incident response process across its lifecycle, security team members had more freedom to focus on high-priority incidents. Over time, this led to a 50% reduction in mean time to respond (MTTR). Automation was also key in reducing overall false-positive rate.

Learn more about the ReliaQuest approach to automation ➞

Improved security posture

Behind all the technology and expertise, there’s really only one goal for cybersecurity tools: protecting your business. ReliaQuest is no exception, and Forrester has proven that choosing ReliaQuest can result in significantly less risk.

Increased risk coverage: 20%

The TEI study found that customers who implemented ReliaQuest increased their risk coverage to the point that the likelihood of a breach decreased by 20%. The report largely attributed this result to two things: ReliaQuest automation features and “the insights and capabilities provided by the ReliaQuest services teams.”

Automation paired with insight also gave customers the leeway to spend more time examining their existing toolsets, which often resulted in driving additional value from those tools.

Of course, better protection of your business results in protected budget as well. Forrester reports that the reduction in risk can be quantified to $2.7 million over 3 years.

The ROI of ReliaQuest

So… is it worth it? According to the study, yes.

The Forrester study found:

  • 350% return on investment in three years
  • < 6-month payback period
  • 20% increase in risk coverage
  • $440K reduction in legacy tools over three years
  • $1.2M avoidance in additional headcount
  • A net-present value* of $5.51M

* Net-present value (NPV) is defined as “The present or current value of (discounted) future net cash flows given an interest rate (the discount rate). A positive project NPV normally indicates that the investment should be made, unless other projects have higher NPVs.”

Conclusion

Cybersecurity investments can be fraught, with tons of stakeholders and usually a lot of money on the table. This report can arm you with the information you need as you evaluate security technology and services. For a free, full copy of the report, visit https://www.reliaquest.com/resources/research-reports/the-total-economic-impact-of-reliaquest/.