Cybersecurity complexity and the channel

In today’s digital economy, complexity itself has become one of the most pressing cybersecurity threats. Businesses are overwhelmed by the sheer number of tools they rely on as they look to secure their business and technology outcomes. Each is intended to reduce risk, yet together, they often create friction, blind spots, and spiralling costs, reducing the impact of transformation projects and innovation initiatives.

This disjointed and confusing setup leads to security teams that are stretched thin, IT budgets under constant strain, and end users experiencing inconsistent protections across an increasingly distributed infrastructure. For those supporting customers through these challenges, particularly channel partners, this environment presents a clear opportunity to lead.

Complexity is the new risk surface

It’s not unusual for an organization to use 20 different security tools, often from multiple vendors, to cover everything from endpoint protection to network access and cloud control. In fact, research suggests that nearly half (49%) of enterprises are now managing more than 20 tools – a number that continues to rise as businesses bolt on new capabilities to secure hybrid environments, SaaS platforms, and remote workforces.

While each of these tools may have value individually, together they create a tangled operational environment that’s difficult to manage and even harder to secure. Fragmentation slows down detection and response, increases the likelihood of misconfiguration, and burdens in-house teams with maintenance they can’t always keep up with.

Many organizations realize that simply adding more tools doesn’t automatically make them safer. Indeed, in some cases, it makes them more vulnerable.

The hidden cost of operational complexity

This complexity isn’t just inconvenient, it actively undermines resilience. When breaches occur, incident response is slowed as teams struggle to piece together fragmented logs and alerts. IT teams face growing challenges in updating policies, onboarding users, managing access controls, and keeping pace with emerging threats.

In extreme cases, this operational drag becomes a blocker to business innovation itself. The more time security teams spend managing tool sprawl, the less capacity they have to support initiatives like AI adoption, cloud migrations, or digital transformation efforts.

For many security leaders, complexity has become their biggest risk, not a lack of budget or staff. KPMG's 2024 Cybersecurity Survey reports that 29% of security leaders identify IT complexity as a major barrier to effectively identifying and remediating threats and vulnerabilities.

When you add to this the loss of business flexibility and being able to respond quickly to new opportunities, the IT and security teams can go from being seen as protecting the business to disabling the business, creating tension where there should be collaboration.

Where the channel comes in

This is exactly where channel partners can deliver unique value. Simplifying the security stack, improving integration across platforms, and offering services that reduce overhead without compromising on control. These are critical needs for organizations navigating today’s security landscape.

Customers aren’t just looking for suppliers; they’re looking for advisors. They want partners who understand how to design secure, scalable architectures that support hybrid work, multicloud deployments, and AI workloads. And they need all of this, without getting locked into rigid or outdated technologies. This is where forward-thinking MSPs and resellers can thrive, not just by selling licenses, but by delivering outcomes.

For example, partners that can help consolidate overlapping tools, optimize cloud security configurations, or provide ongoing risk assessments are delivering immediate value. In doing so, they also directly address the complexity problem.

Making services central

One of the clearest trends we’ve seen so far this year is the growing demand for partner-led services. Whether it’s helping a customer migrate from legacy tools, deploying a modern SASE framework, or managing day-to-day security operations, services are now a core part of the channel value proposition.

This shift benefits both parties. Customers receive ongoing support and more strategic input. Meanwhile, partners can take advantage of stronger relationships, unlock more predictable, recurring revenue, and build scalable business models that enable them to grow and differentiate more effectively in an increasingly competitive market.

Looking to the future, success will be shaped not by what products partners sell, but by how well they help deliver outcomes and sustain them over time. There is a clear shift to a trust-based economy, where partners have a unique vantage point as they build relationships across an industry or build specialized skills for a use case.

Automation and AI: tools for channel growth

The complexity of the modern threat landscape is simply too great to handle manually. That’s why automation and AI are becoming indispensable, both for customers and the partners who serve them. These technologies aren’t about replacing people. They are about enabling smaller security teams to detect, analyze, and respond to threats more efficiently.

AI can help cut through noise, identify patterns across large datasets, and even improve visibility across an organization’s infrastructure. For partners, embracing AI is not just a technical shift; it’s a commercial one. Automation can help scale service offerings, reduce delivery costs, and strengthen managed detection and response capabilities.

This is particularly critical as many organizations recognize they can’t adequately support business-critical AI adoption if they’re still bogged down managing fragmented security architectures. Simplification unlocks capacity for innovation.

Complexity can be managed with the right strategy

Cybersecurity complexity is not going away. If anything, it’s accelerating, driven by distributed workforces, cloud-native apps, AI, and increasingly sophisticated attackers. At the same time, businesses are striving to be more flexible, respond faster to new opportunities, drive innovation, and deliver greater value for customers.

Complexity doesn’t have to equal chaos; with the right strategy, it can be managed, streamlined, and in some cases, turned into a competitive advantage.

The partners who will lead are those who simplify complexity, improve visibility, and deliver faster, more secure outcomes. As cyber risks evolve, the channel’s role as trusted advisors will only grow in importance.

What's next for channel partners?

Now is the time for partners to take stock and lead with purpose. That starts by reassessing their portfolios to identify where complexity can be reduced and innovation can be embraced, for themselves and their customers. It’s about identifying solutions that integrate seamlessly, scale easily, and automate intelligently.

Vendors must take the lead in initiating proactive conversations with customers about their current security architecture: identifying gaps, eliminating overlaps, and finding opportunities to simplify. The more partners can build trust by selecting solutions to priority business challenges, working on powerful use cases, or demonstrating strong industry credentials, the more they will build relevance with their customers and clients.

The partners that thrive won’t just sell technology, they’ll simplify it, shape strategy, and lead transformation projects with confidence.