5 Reasons to Choose a Unified API Over Outsourced Development
Building a best-in-class cybersecurity technology is hard. According to research, the cybersecurity market is projected to reach $351.92 billion to $500.70 billion by 2030. In a crowded market, companies must focus on their core product’s capabilities. As threats evolve, the detection and incident response tools must keep pace.
When a cybersecurity solution fails to integrate into customers’ IT and security stacks, it becomes nothing more than another expensive tool. Integrations have become the new table stakes for cybersecurity vendors. As customers integrate 70 to 130 different security tools, they need a cohesive, connected ecosystem.
The move to the cloud created overlaps among different technologies. Today, they must correlate identity and access management (IAM) data with firewall and web application firewall (WAF) data to monitor for network and web application access and authorization. Building on that, these datasets must integrate with endpoint and mobile device management (MDM) solutions so organizations can link device security to user network access.
According to Sacumen, the average security vendor needs to build 150-200 connectors that help to enhance the capabilities of their product. While outsourcing API development enables organizations to scale their sales, using a security-focused Unified API platform offers faster time-to-market and various other benefits.
- Integrate within Minutes with Unified APIs
With a Unified API, organizations can integrate their security solutions with multiple categories of product at the literal click of a mouse. A Unified API simplifies development and usage by providing pre-built connectors and standardized endpoints to reduce integration workflow complexity.
A Unified API platform reduces the total number of APIs while expanding the overall number of integrations. Once vendors integrate with the Unified API platform, they gain access to all connectors across product categories. Within minutes, organizations can integrate their solution with products across:
- Security event management
- Ticketing and notification
- Vulnerability management
- Data Storage
- Identity management
- Endpoint security
- Network security
- Cloud security
- Asset management
- Email security
With a Unified API, organizations simply need to:
- Sign up for the service.
- Create an access token to provide an access token.
- Explore the list of connectors that offer a single interface for multiple providers in the same category.
- Create an allow/deny list of available providers within the category of connectors that end users can set up, controlling their product’s integrations if they want to offer additional features or configurations.
The Unified API platform means security vendors no longer need to go through the time-consuming processes of:
- Discussing use cases.
- Choosing initial vendor connectors.
- Setting up systems.
- Rapidly Integrate with More Technologies so Sales Can Always Answer “Yes!”
The key to an effective sales and customer retention strategy is always being able to answer client questions with a confident, “yes we do!” When organizations use a Unified API platform, they unlock a broad ecosystem of connectivity that improves the sales pipeline and acts as a market differentiator.
An individual security function Unified API enables integrations with more tools. For example, a customer may have any or all of the following identity management technologies in their security stack:
- Internal user Identity and Access Management (IAM)
- Customer identity and access management (CIAM)
- Privileged access or account management (PAM)
- Identity governance for single sign-on, multi-factor authentication, lifecycle management
- API access management
While developers may offer marketplaces with prebuilt APIs, they typically focus on individual technologies rather than on security functions. Before approving requests from buyers and customers, vendors must customize each connector for each tool to ensure it works with their product.
By easily onboarding any new technology, the Unified API reduces costs associated with:
- Delayed sales cycles.
- Deal loss.
- Customer churn.
With a Unified API, all these technologies fall within the identity management function, meaning that sales teams and customer support teams can answer “yes we do integrate with them!”
- Automatically Map Data to the Open Cybersecurity Schema Framework (OCSF)
A Unified API uses a unified data schema based on the OCSF and incorporates other industry standards, like STIX/TAXII for integration across all security products. Additionally, the security-focused platform provides a single query language for access to data stored across all security products.
The Unified API eliminates the costs associated with:
- Data model mapping.
- Studying log format interfaces.
- Parsing data.
Once a vendor integrates their product into the platform, they automatically enable bidirectional connections across various cybersecurity functions without having to consider proprietary formats and schemas.
- Use Pre-Tested and Validated APIs
A Unified API provides security vendors with pre-tested and validated connections to as many other technologies as their customers want. Once the security vendor connects to the integration platform, they can integrate with each category’s API which then communicates with all other technologies under that function.
This eliminated the time-consuming and expensive costs associated with developing integrations across individual security tools, including:
- Code coverage analysis
- Internal code review
- Test planning
- Deployment
- Internal quality assurance reviews for all connected technologies.
- Client testing.
- UAT environment setup.
- Bug fixing.
- Checking against the validator.
- Fixing additional reported issues.
When using an integration platform, security vendors reduce costs by conducting due diligence across Unified APIs for different security functions, rather than reviewing all integrations.
Rather than reviewing code and quality testing all 150 -200 APIs, they review documentation for 10 – 20 APIs.
- Ensure Continuous Availability with Paying for Customer Support Services
Integrations are only useful when they work. Security connectors can be fragile with service disruption arising from schema changes related to:
- Adding new fields.
- Changing field names.
- Updating log structures.
When a security vendor uses an Unified API platform, they reduce the number of overall APIs which, in turn, reduces the potential service disruptions. Further, the integration platform maintains all connectors’ availability to ensure continued uptime.
This eliminates the costs associated with outsourced developer customer support packages that can include:
- 24/7 support to resolve technical issues.
- Proactive maintenance and upgrades that become costly as the organization adds more integrations.
- Maintaining documentation for each API built.
- Gathering user feedback to inform ongoing development and refinement.
- Building tailor configurations and integrations.
Since the integration platform maintains the Unified APIs, vendors can take a “set it and forget it” approach for providing connectors.
Synqly: Building Connections to Reduce Costs and Achieve Growth Objectives
Built by security veterans specifically for security vendors, Synqly addresses the use cases that our customers need. Security teams need and want integrated solutions, and we understand how to build and maintain security tool APIs. Our security-focused integration platform provides a unified API across multiple vendors within a security control category, reducing the time and resources required to deliver a broad, integrated security system.
Contact us today to see how choosing our integration platform eliminates costs that outsourcing would create.