For security vendors, several central truths exist. Security controls fall into a limited number of categories, often defined by laws and compliance frameworks. Every vendor’s approach to managing these security controls is unique, even where they provide offerings within the same control category. Increasingly, these different security control categories overlap, meaning customers want solutions that integrate with the rest of their security technology stack.
With the average cybersecurity technology stack comprising anywhere from 70 to 130 different security tools, individual vendors must provide out-of-the-box integrations to remain competitive. To meet key security objectives, security teams need fast, high-fidelity detections to investigate and respond to incidents rapidly. While a security solution may be innovative and best-in-class, security teams will settle for a lesser technology that integrates into their ecosystem. However, the time spent building these integrations for many security vendors takes developers away from improving the technology’s primary capabilities.
Security vendors need to provide integrations to differentiate themselves in a crowded market. By understanding the difference between workflow automation and Unified APIs, they can create an integration strategy that enables customer satisfaction and revenue growth.
What is the difference between workflow and integration?
Workflow automation tools use specific triggers to automate types of tasks, while integrations provide a standardized interface across multiple applications.
While both workflow automations and integrations connect software applications, they differ across three key areas:
- Code complexity: Integrations are more complex to build than workflow automations because a unified API accesses data from multiple applications simultaneously.
- Ease of use: Integrations are slightly more challenging for non-technical end-users than workflow automations because unified APIs focus on the data rather than an individual task.
- Integration approach: Integrations provide a standardized, broad approach that normalizes data to ensure consistency across platforms, while workflow automation is often a one-off response to managing a specific issue.
What are the types of product integrations?
From the security vendor’s perspective, two main integrations matter the most:
- External integrations: connecting with third-party services to enhance the product’s value for end-users.
- Third-party integrations: connecting with external platforms to extend product functionality.
Increasingly, customers need to connect disparate security tools so that they can achieve their overarching security objectives. These customer integration needs can lead a security vendor to create two types of integration.
Standardized customer-facing integrations
These integrations create seamless data access and management across platforms, often included in the subscription price. Security vendors often prioritize building these integrations when the connectivity benefits a broad customer base. For example, an Identity and Access Management (IAM) tool may provide a standard customer-facing integration for a security information and event management (SIEM) tool that a large percentage of its customers use.
The advantages of standardized integrations include:
- Universal Application: Serve a wide range of customers efficiently.
- Cost-Effective: Reduces the need for costly, custom solutions.
- Ease of Maintenance: Simplifies the engineering team’s workload.
One-off customer-facing integrations
One-off customer-facing integrations are tailored specifically to meet unique customer needs. These highly personalized integrations focus on specific systems and workflows to address a unique use case for a small number of customers. For example, a SIEM tool may offer one of these integrations for a high-profile customer’s in-house developed tool.
Security vendors often use these one-off integrations to differentiate themselves with larger enterprise customers, making the costs to build them worthwhile. However, the engineering team typically requires specific tools to help build these, like:
- Middleware: Acts as a bridge between systems.
- Custom Scripts: Offers specific functionality.
- Low-Code Workflow Automation Tools: Streamline the process for easier management.
Cybersecurity vendors also face a unique challenge around these custom integrations. As new cybersecurity tools enter the market, customers who purchase them may request specific integrations that seem cost-ineffective at the time. Refusing to build this one-off integration can be problematic later when the security tool becomes a leader in its category. Even if you build a one-off integration, it may not work for all customers who want to integrate with the tool. This shift in use case could mean doing similar work twice, increasing overall integration build and maintenance costs. In other words, this is a no-win situation.
Different approaches to building integrations
Connecting with a customer’s security ecosystem is a critical business driver for developing an integration. After deciding to build the integration, organizations and their development teams must decide how to move forward.
In-house development and integration
Building integrations in-house offers a highly customizable approach tailored to specific software environments. However, in-house development is resource-intensive. An individual business integration can cost anywhere from $10,000 to $40,000, depending on its complexity and the need for skilled engineers.
In security, these costs can be more than $40,000 since engineers need to have specialized skills for handling security data’s complex formats and schemas.
Workflow automation
Workflow automation tools enable engineers to define specific triggers and actions, automating tasks across various tools using APIs. These tools help manage low-code, off-the-shelf workflows with limited data normalization. However, the tools can become costly and error-prone as API requests increase.
From a security vendor perspective, these fail to provide customers with the data normalization that they need. Not only are these less effective for managing security data’s schemas and formats, but they also focus on task automation, which limits how security teams can use them.
Unified API
Unified API offers a standardized approach that simplifies development and usage. By providing pre-built connectors and standardized endpoints, they reduce integration workflow complexity. Unified APIs manage communication with various APIs and backend models for a consistent design and seamless developer experience.
For security vendors, unified APIs can provide the necessary connectivity. However, they need to be built by developers who understand that security use cases require flexibility, as you need to update your schemas to respond to new threats and risks.
What are the key advantages of unified API technologies?
Unified API technology offers immense benefits for businesses, primarily by simplifying and streamlining integration processes. By using pre-built connectors and standardized endpoints it reduces the complexity and time involved in integration workflows.
Faster time to market and scalability
Unified APIs reduce integration timeframes by connecting with large numbers of applications quickly. Their standardized data model ensures that integrations can scale as quickly as needed, supporting your business objectives and eliminating the need for custom development. By using a unified API, your developers can focus on innovating your product rather than integrating with other vendors.
Reduce costs
Unified APIs shift the labor-intensive task of managing multiple API updates to the provider, significantly cutting down maintenance fees. For example, one insurance technology company reduced integration management overhead by 90% and saved over $100,000 in development costs by using a unified API to integrate their human resources and payroll applications. For security vendors, these reduced costs are augmented by additional sales as their technologies integrate into customer security ecosystems.
Reduced maintenance responsibilities
When using a unified API vendor, organizations shift the maintenance costs to their provider. The unified API provider handles most of the updates, so your internal team can focus on improving your core product.
Ease of documentation
Since the unified API offers a consistent architecture across all integrations, your customers don’t have to wade through various documents or learn complex systems for each integration.
Standardized pagination
A unified API standardizes different pagination, sorting, and filtering formats to ensure uniformity. These elements are critical to application connectivity and prevent over-fetching or under-fetching.
New revenue opportunities
Since unified APIs facilitate seamless connectivity across diverse applications, you can reach new customers. Not only do you offload the costs of building and maintaining the integration, but you can also differentiate your product by offering more out-of-the-box integrations.
3 Key Capabilities for Using Unified APIs for Cybersecurity Integrations
Unfortunately for security vendors, the data that their technologies create differs significantly from traditional business data. While a unified API may offer various benefits, a business can only gain them if the unified API understands how security data and tools work. When implementing a unified API, security vendors should consider the following five capabilities.
Manage various data formats and schemas
Security tools use different data formats and schemas than traditional business applications. A security solution may use any of the following formats:
- Syslog
- JSON
- XML
- Vendor specific formats, like Palo Alto, Cisco, Microsoft Windows Event logs
Each format may use a different schema with its own:
- Field names
- Structures
- Nesting
Respond to dynamic schemas
Cybersecurity tool APIs require more flexibility than traditional business applications. As threats and risks change, so do the schemas. A unified API solution should understand these so that the API remains available even when you:
- Adds new field
- Change field names
- Update the entire log structure
Manage security and compliance
Security tools generate sensitive data different from traditional business applications. A unified API solution should know how to manage both static sensitive customer data and dynamic IT environment data, including:
- Names
- Birthdates
- Bank account information
- IP addresses
- Hostnames
- User credentials
Synqly: Providing Unified APIs that Understand Cybersecurity
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 IPaaS provides a single 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 to improve revenue with a unified security API that understands you and your customers.
