The vendor demo appeared impressive with real-time threat dashboards, automated response capabilities, and AI-driven anomaly detection. The procurement team was convinced, and the board approved the investment, leading to confident implementation.
Eighteen months later, operations teams are questioning: what problem did this actually solve?
The alerts don’t match operational reality. Automation triggers false positives that disrupt production. Dashboards show metrics that nobody understands or acts upon. And the promised “comprehensive protection” hasn’t prevented a single significant incident.
This pattern repeats across various industries. Not because the technology is flawed, but because organisations keep purchasing solutions before fully understanding their issues.
The flawed approach to security investment
Industrial organisations face constant pressure to show cyber security progress. Boards seek assurance. Regulators require evidence. Auditors demand documentation. This leads to a risky shortcut: buying visible security measures before developing unseen strategy.
Physical assets seem to show progress, like new security appliances in racks, additional monitoring tools in the SOC, more dashboards in the control room. These investments are tangible, measurable, and simple to explain during budget meetings.
Strategy, however, often feels intangible. Risk assessments don’t look good in photos. Process improvements don’t produce impressive stats. Operational alignment efforts don’t generate demo-ready dashboards.
As a result, organisations tend to focus on what they can display, not what they truly need. The outcome? Costly theatre that appears to offer security but essentially serves as decoration.
Why smart organisations keep making poor purchases
Three factors drive these costly errors, creating a cycle that’s hard to break.
Vendors focus on solving their own problems, not yours. Their demos showcase capabilities designed for ideal conditions. Clean networks. Modern infrastructure. Full visibility. Your environment probably doesn’t have these features. But the impressive demo hides this mismatch. You’re buying a solution built for someone else’s situation.
Procurement processes reward the number of features over operational fit. When requirements are unclear, detailed capability lists seem safer than targeted solutions. More features suggest better coverage. Complex tools imply advanced protection. The vendor with the longest specification sheet wins, regardless of whether those features address your real vulnerabilities.
Leadership often equates spending with security. Budget decisions become proof of due diligence. “We invested heavily in cyber security” satisfies stakeholders and auditors. Whether that investment actually reduces risk becomes a secondary concern, only checked when problems arise.
These forces combine to generate purchases that meet procurement criteria but don’t improve security.
What effective security truly involves
Organisations that build real resilience don’t start by shopping for solutions. They begin by answering tough questions about their current situation.
What specific operational processes must stay protected to ensure business continuity? Not just generic “critical infrastructure” categories from compliance standards, but the particular systems and workflows that directly influence safety, production, or customer commitments.
Where do current security measures fall short of operational needs? Not gaps flagged by vendor assessments, but disconnects between how protection is supposed to work and how operations actually run.
Who understands both the technical systems and the business impacts of their failure? Not job titles, but the specific people who can bridge operational requirements and security capabilities.
When do security controls cause operational issues that weaken their effectiveness? Not hypothetical edge cases, but real situations where security measures lead to workarounds that increase, rather than reduce, risk.
Why does each security measure exist, and how can we confirm it’s working? Not just compliance excuses, but clear links between specific risks and the measures meant to address them.
These questions seem simple. Yet most organisations find it hard to answer them clearly. They have a general sense of operational priorities and a broad understanding of security principles. But they lack the detailed operational context needed for informed security choices.
This gap explains why expensive tools often deliver limited value. The technology is capable. It just solves problems the organisation doesn’t face while ignoring the ones it does.
Strategy Before Technology
The most effective security programmes follow a deliberate sequence that prioritises understanding before investing. Define desired outcomes before exploring capabilities. What does success look like in operational terms? Fewer incidents? Quicker response times? Better operational visibility? Clearer evidence of compliance? Be specific about what improvement means before assessing tools that promise to deliver it.
Document real operational constraints, not idealised versions. How do systems genuinely connect? Who truly has access to what? Where do data flows cross security boundaries? What occurs when things go wrong? Understanding reality helps prevent purchasing solutions designed for environments that don’t exist.
Honestly recognise resource limitations. Budget constraints matter, but so do operational windows for changes, team capacity to learn new tools, and organisational tolerance for disruption. Solutions that neglect these constraints are doomed to fail, regardless of their technical features.
Test assumptions with targeted pilots before committing to enterprise deployment. Can your team configure this effectively? Do the alerts deliver actionable insights? Does it integrate smoothly with existing workflows? Small-scale validation uncovers issues that vendor demonstrations often hide.
Breaking the costly cycle
The pattern of buying, deploying, and eventually abandoning expensive security tools isn’t inevitable. It’s the predictable result of inverted priorities.
Organisations that break this cycle share common practices. They spend time understanding their specific risk profile before investing in tools. They prioritise solutions their teams can operate effectively, rather than those with a long list of features. They measure security success by operational outcomes, not just technical metrics.
Most importantly, they resist pressure to demonstrate progress through purchases. They understand that sustainable security demands careful thought, deliberate processes, and technology applied in that order.
The alternative to theatre
Every security investment involves a choice between two fundamentally different approaches.
Theatre focuses on appearances. It looks impressive in presentations and budget reports. It produces statistics and dashboards. It satisfies auditors and impresses visitors. But it doesn’t genuinely reduce operational risk. Operational teams recognise this disconnect even when executives don’t.
Resilience focuses on effectiveness. It’s harder to showcase in boardroom slides. It requires patient implementation of unglamorous processes. It relies more on operational integration than on technical sophistication. But it truly works when tested by real incidents.
Choosing theatre costs more than wasted budgets. It creates false confidence that can be more dangerous than acknowledged limitations. When costly tools fail to prevent incidents, the response often is to buy more tools, creating a cycle.
Eventually, organisations face a moment of realisation. Their accumulated security investments aren’t providing the protection they promised. At this point, the choice becomes clear: continue buying theatre or start building resilience.
Making smarter choices
Before making your next security investment, lay the foundation that enables effective purchases.
Understand what you’re truly protecting and why it matters to your operations. Focus on specific systems whose compromise would impact your ability to meet business commitments, not just compliance categories.
Identify gaps between your current capabilities and operational needs. Not vendor-defined “coverage gaps,” but actual disconnects between how you’re protected and the risks you face.
Define clear requirements based on operational realities, not tool capabilities. What specific problems need solving? What constraints must solutions respect? What outcomes will show success?
Your future effectiveness and budget depend on getting this right.
Real protection requires the discipline to understand problems before buying solutions. It means saying no to impressive demonstrations that don’t address operational needs. It involves accepting that sustainable security is built through steady capability development, not through dramatic technology deployments.
Your operations don’t become better by buying tools. They improve by understanding problems, developing solutions, and deploying them systematically. Your cybersecurity strategy should follow this same principle.