Many organizations are rethinking how they approach endpoint security. And this time, they’re looking to simplify things rather than add more tools. The goal is to reduce complexity and risk, lower costs, and stop attacks earlier in their lifecycle.
Instead of layering additional solutions, leading organizations are consolidating endpoint protection, detection, response, and proactive hardening into a unified platform. This shift enables better security outcomes with fewer resources while shrinking the attack surface.
Why Is the Current State of Endpoint Protection Defined by Complexity, Cost, Gaps?
Many businesses still rely on a combination of endpoint protection (EPP) and third-party EDR solutions. While each delivers value independently, running multiple endpoint agents introduces unnecessary complexity, increases costs, and creates gaps in visibility and control.
Detection and response remain critical, but organizations are now asking a key question: Is our current approach delivering the outcomes the business actually needs? Too often, that answer is no.
For many organizations, endpoint security has evolved into a fragmented environment that creates more challenges than it solves:
- High total cost of endpoint security
- Increased risk due to security gaps
- Reactive security with limited control over risky behavior
- Higher financial exposure to cyberattacks
- Limited visibility into in-progress attacks
- Tool sprawl increases operational complexity
- Alerts lacking context across security layers
This complexity is a result of years of adding new tools to address emerging threats. According to 2026 Gartner® research, “Organizations report anywhere between 43 and 47 tools, on average, to support their cybersecurity program, with some reporting over 100 tools”1. This is likely why more than half of executives (52%) cite complexity as the biggest impediment to effective cybersecurity operations².
As the number of tools increases, so does the operational burden. Security teams must manage multiple agents, consoles, and workflows often without a unified view of what’s happening across the environment.
While EDR provides strong detection and response capabilities, it often operates in isolation when deployed alongside separate prevention tools. This lack of integration limits context, slows investigations, and increases the burden on already lean IT and security teams.
This increases operational and financial costs, often without delivering better security outcomes.
Why Do Current Approaches Fall Short?
Current approaches are inadequate because modern attacks have changed. Threat actors are faster, AI-enabled, and rely heavily on living-off-the-land (LOTL) techniques that abuse legitimate tools.
A recent analysis of 700,000 high-severity security incidents revealed that 84% of cyberattacks now abuse legitimate tools to evade detection. This means detection alone is no longer sufficient. By the time an alert is triggered, attackers may have already established a foothold.
Without proactive controls to reduce the attack surface and limit malicious behavior, security teams are forced into a non-stop, reactive cycle of monitoring, investigating, and responding after the fact. This not only increases workload but also extends the time required to contain threats, raising the likelihood of incidents escalating into full-scale breaches.
The operational impact of the current approach is also significant. According to the 2025 Bitdefender Cybersecurity Assessment Report, 49% of security professionals report burnout driven by the constant need to monitor and respond to threats3.
Compounding the issue is complexity. Security teams must continuously pivot between tools and consoles, slowing down response and increasing the risk of missed signals.
What’s the Risk of Keeping the Current EDR Approach?
Maintaining the current approach comes at a cost, both operationally and financially. Organizations relying on today’s fragmented tools and reactive detection models face:
- An increased likelihood of ransomware and data breaches
- Greater financial exposure due to downtime and disruption
- Rising operational costs driven by manual investigation and response
- Over-reliance on scarce and expensive security expertise
These challenges are compounded by a growing skills gap. According to the 2025 Bitdefender Cybersecurity Assessment Report 2025, 57% of C-level executives say the cybersecurity skills shortage has worsened over the past 12 months4, which makes it even harder to effectively manage complex, tool-heavy environments.
As threats become more advanced and resources more constrained, maintaining the status quo doesn’t just slow security operations; it increases the likelihood and impact of a successful attack.
How Are Organizations Shifting Toward a More Proactive Security Approach?
Leading organizations are adopting a new security model built on consolidation and proactive defense. Rather than adding more tools, they are unifying prevention, protection, detection, and response into a single platform. This reduces complexity while improving visibility and control across the attack lifecycle.
More than theory, you can measure the impact of this new approach. Based on Bitdefender internal analysis of customer environments, organizations that transition to a unified security platform have reduced operational costs by up to 50%, without sacrificing security effectiveness.
The shift goes beyond consolidation. Organizations often experience a fundamental change in mindset: from reacting to threats, to proactively reducing risk in the first place.
Instead of waiting for alerts to trigger response, organizations are becoming focused on:
- Controlling risky user behavior without disrupting productivity
- Limiting excessive privileges
- Preventing the misuse of legitimate tools by threat actors
How Are Organizations Implementing this New Cybersecurity Approach?
To implement this new and simplified approach, organizations are turning to an EDR solution that includes Proactive Hardening and Attack Surface Reduction (PHASR). GravityZone PHASR limits what attackers can do, even if an endpoint or account is compromised. Instead of reacting to attacks, organizations actively prevent the conditions that enable them to succeed.
Bitdefender customers using PHASR have reduced their internal attack surface by up to 95%, significantly limiting exploitable paths available to attackers. At the same time, by proactively restricting legitimate but risky or atypical behavior, PHASR can reduce investigation and response workloads by up to 50%.
The result is fewer incidents, reduced noise, and faster, more focused response when it matters most.
What Are Typical Business Outcomes from Consolidating EDR with Proactive Hardening?
By consolidating endpoint security into a unified platform that includes proactive hardening, organizations achieve measurable outcomes:
- Lower total cost of ownership
Eliminate redundant tools and reduce vendor and operational overhead - Reduced risk across the attack lifecycle
Stop more attacks before they escalate into incidents or breaches - Increased efficiency for lean IT teams
Reduce investigation and response workloads through automation and proactive controls - Faster, more accurate response
Correlate signals across layers to prioritize real threats and act quickly
Organizations that move from fragmented EPP and third-party EDR to a unified platform with integrated EDR and PHASR are not just simplifying their security stack; they are fundamentally improving outcomes. They reduce risk, lower costs, and shift from reactive firefighting to proactive control.
And in today’s threat landscape, that shift is no longer optional; it is essential.
Ready to Reduce Complexity and Stop More Attacks Before They Start?
Explore our solution guide, Consolidate Endpoint Security to Reduce Cost.
See how a unified approach that combines EPP, EDR, and PHASR helps reduce risk, cut costs, and improve security outcomes.
- Gartner, Optimize Strategic Cybersecurity Vendors With Gartner’s 4-Pillar Evaluation Framework, John Watts et.al.,6 April 2026
GARTNER is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates. - IBM Institute for Business Value: Capturing the cybersecurity dividend.
- Bitdefender, 2025 Cybersecurity Assessment
- Bitdefender, 2025 Cybersecurity Assessment
