It wasn’t long ago that cybersecurity budgets were ballooning, buoyed by escalating ransomware attacks and the need to support remote workers. However, greater cyber spending often didn’t deliver greater security results, which puts pressure on new requests for the next budget cycle.
Today, every penny of a cyber budget is scrutinized, and cyber leaders are struggling to prioritize security strategies that offer the biggest bang for the buck. Knowing which investments will yield returns isn't easy in an environment of evolving risks and economic uncertainty.
That’s why we’ve focused on building Privileged Access Management (PAM) solutions that don’t just reduce risk of a cyberattack, but also are proven to reduce costs. To validate the return on a Delinea investment, we partnered with CyberEdge to understand how our customers measure savings and create a model any company considering a PAM investment can use to calculate their expected ROI.
To that end, the experts at CyberEdge interviewed several Delinea customers who provided valuable insights into the economic and intangible benefits of using Delinea PAM. The customers range from mid-size companies with small IT teams to enterprises with dozens of IT staff. They represent a mix of public and private firms in technology, healthcare, and financial services industries. These companies use various Delinea products, including Secret Server, Server PAM, and Privilege Manager, to control privileged accounts and access across their IT environments.
Fast time to value
The results from the interviews demonstrate that Delinea customers realize rapid value, with a break-even point of less than three months. This includes time to install and configure Delinea to meet an organization’s requirements, which usually takes one to two months.
. . . for every $1.00 these four customers spent with Delinea, they achieved an average of $12.22 in return
On average, the Delinea customers interviewed realized annual financial benefits of $1,712,478, providing a first-year ROI of 1,322%, or 12.22x first-year investment. Put another way, for every $1.00 these four customers spent with Delinea, they achieved an average of $12.22 in return.
CyberEdge found that Delinea PAM impacted several business metrics:
Lower regulatory compliance costs: Most cost savings customers realize stem from compliance efforts. The companies interviewed for this report have several compliance requirements to meet, including SOC2, HIPAA, Sarbanes Oxley, and ISO standards.
Auditors and regulators require documentation, reporting, and even control sampling. Delinea allows them to quickly generate reports and documentation that each of these regimes is being met. Avoiding fines for non-compliance and damage to their reputation is of even greater value.
-
Data breach cost reduction: The second-largest financial benefit is derived from data breach cost reduction. This study calculated costs including direct losses of business, breach disclosure costs associated with communicating with customers and stakeholders, regulatory fines, and recovery costs.
CyberEdge also considered the likelihood that customers would experience a data breach and the extent to which that breach would impact sensitive systems with and without Delinea.
-
More cost-effective management: Supporting privileged users can quickly get out of hand without the right tools. Password resets, changes to access privileges, enrollment, and de-provisioning lead to ongoing support costs. As companies grow, IT infrastructure becomes more complex, and the number of people requiring access to systems increases.
Delinea puts all the controls for many sensitive systems in one place. It makes it easy to assign authorization, rotate or reset passwords and other secrets, and programmatically revoke access when certain conditions are triggered. In addition, customers who use Delinea’s Privilege Manager’s application control functionality can remove local admin accounts on workstations without increasing the amount of work for the IT help desk to review and approve install requests and configuration changes.
- Lower cyber insurance compliance costs: Cyber insurance underwriters want to see evidence that proper controls are in place for privileged access, demonstrating that privileged accounts are secured, managed, and monitored, and those accounts apply granular authorizations. They ask for audit logs of access and recordings of actions taken. With Delinea, these reports are simple to produce.
Apart from financial ROI, the Delinea customers interviewed also gained substantial intangible benefits from using Deliea PAM. Having a central automated system for PAM management improved their overall security ecosystem. Visibility of privileged accounts improved, even across a distributed IT environment, which aligned multiple teams across the organization and increased their confidence in their security posture.
CyberEdge notes in the report that PAM solutions are one of the strongest positive security measures an organization can deploy. PAM is a must-have tool for organizations desiring a safer, more compliant, and more efficient business environment in today's digital age.
