Why “Best of Breed” vs. “Platform” Is the Wrong Starting Question
The cybersecurity industry loves this debate: should you pick the best individual tool in each category, or consolidate onto a single platform? The honest answer is that it depends entirely on your team’s size, skills, and capacity to manage multiple tools. A 5,000-person company with a 15-person security team can manage and integrate best-of-breed tools across categories. A 200-person company with one IT generalist who also handles security cannot — and shouldn’t try. For most SMBs, fewer tools that work well together will outperform a collection of best-in-class products that nobody has time to configure, tune, or monitor. Start with your team’s operational capacity, not with a product comparison spreadsheet.The Core Categories Every Organization Needs
Regardless of your size or industry, your security stack needs to cover these fundamental areas. You don’t need a separate tool for each one — many products span multiple categories — but you need coverage in all of them.1. Endpoint Protection
What it does: Protects laptops, desktops, servers, and mobile devices from malware, ransomware, and other threats. Modern endpoint protection goes beyond traditional antivirus to include behavioral detection, machine learning-based analysis, and automated response capabilities. What to look for: Detection capabilities that go beyond signature-based matching, automated response actions (isolate a compromised device, kill a malicious process), integration with your operating systems and device management tools, a cloud-based management console that doesn’t require on-premises infrastructure, and clear reporting that shows you what’s being blocked and why. Questions to ask vendors: What’s your detection rate for novel (zero-day) threats, and how is that measured? How does the agent perform on older or lower-powered hardware? What happens when a device is offline — does protection continue? How are false positives handled, and what’s the typical false positive rate your customers see? Can your tool integrate with our existing device management or IT ticketing system? Common mistakes: Deploying endpoint protection but never reviewing the alerts it generates. An endpoint tool that fires 200 alerts a day and nobody triages them is providing a false sense of security. If you don’t have the staff to monitor alerts, pair your endpoint tool with a managed detection and response service.2. Identity and Access Management
What it does: Controls who can access what across your organization. This includes single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA), directory services, privileged access management, and lifecycle management (onboarding and offboarding users). What to look for: Support for MFA across all applications, not just some. Phishing-resistant MFA methods (hardware keys, passkeys) in addition to push notifications and SMS. Integration with your existing directory (Active Directory, Azure AD / Entra ID, Google Workspace). Automated provisioning and deprovisioning tied to your HR system or onboarding process. Clear audit logs showing who accessed what and when. Questions to ask vendors: How do you handle MFA for legacy applications that don’t natively support it? What’s the user experience for employees — how many extra clicks or steps does authentication add? How quickly can we deprovision access when someone leaves the organization? Do you support conditional access policies (different requirements based on location, device, risk level)? What happens if the MFA service itself goes down — is there a secure fallback? Common mistakes: Deploying MFA for email and VPN but not for cloud applications, admin consoles, or remote desktop. Attackers will find and exploit the gaps. Also, failing to revoke access promptly when employees leave — orphaned accounts are one of the most common attack vectors in SMB breaches.3. Email Security
What it does: Protects your organization from phishing, business email compromise (BEC), malware delivered via email, and spam. Email remains the number one attack vector, making this category non-negotiable. What to look for: Inbound filtering that catches phishing, malware, and impersonation attempts. Protection against business email compromise, including detection of display name spoofing, look-alike domains, and vendor impersonation. URL rewriting and time-of-click analysis (checking links when the user clicks, not just when the email arrives). DMARC, DKIM, and SPF configuration and monitoring to prevent spoofing of your own domain. Outbound DLP (data loss prevention) to catch sensitive data leaving via email. Questions to ask vendors: How do you detect BEC attempts that don’t contain malware or malicious links — pure social engineering? Can you show me examples of phishing emails your product caught that native Microsoft or Google security missed? How do you handle encrypted attachments? What’s your approach to quarantine — who reviews quarantined messages and how quickly can legitimate emails be released? Do you provide any user-facing tools (report phishing button, real-time warnings on suspicious emails)? Common mistakes: Relying solely on the built-in security features of Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace. These provide a baseline, but dedicated email security solutions consistently catch threats that native controls miss — particularly sophisticated BEC and targeted phishing.4. Backup and Recovery
What it does: Ensures you can restore your data and systems after a ransomware attack, accidental deletion, hardware failure, or any other destructive event. What to look for: Automated, regular backups of all critical data and systems. At least one copy that is immutable (cannot be modified or deleted, even by an administrator) or air-gapped (physically or logically separated from your production network). Tested restoration capabilities — not just backup jobs that complete, but confirmed ability to restore data and bring systems back online. Granular recovery (restore a single file, mailbox, or database) in addition to full system recovery. Clear recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) that match your business requirements. Questions to ask vendors: How are backups protected from ransomware that specifically targets backup systems? Can you demonstrate a full system restore? How long does it take? What’s the retention policy, and can we customize it? Are backups encrypted in transit and at rest? If your backup service goes down, can we still access our backup data? Common mistakes: Having backups but never testing restoration. The time to discover that your backups are corrupted, incomplete, or too slow to restore is not during a ransomware incident. Test quarterly at minimum.5. Security Monitoring and Detection
What it does: Watches your environment for suspicious activity, correlates events across multiple data sources, and alerts you (or responds automatically) when something looks wrong. What to look for: For most SMBs, this means either a SIEM (Security Information and Event Management) system or a managed detection and response (MDR) service — or both. The critical question is whether you have staff to monitor and respond to alerts 24/7. If you do, a SIEM with well-tuned detection rules may work. If you don’t — and most SMBs don’t — an MDR service provides the security operations center (SOC) capability you need without building one in-house. Look for coverage across your key data sources: endpoint, identity/authentication, email, cloud, and network. Correlation capabilities that connect related events into a coherent picture rather than firing isolated alerts. Low noise — the ratio of actionable alerts to false positives matters more than the total number of detections. And clear escalation and response procedures, whether that’s your internal team acting on alerts or a managed service taking response actions on your behalf. Questions to ask vendors: What data sources do you ingest, and what’s the cost model (per device, per GB, flat rate)? What’s your median time to detect a real threat in your customer base? If you’re an MDR provider, what response actions can you take on my behalf — and what requires my approval first? How do you handle after-hours alerts? Can you show me an example of a real incident you detected and resolved for a customer similar to us? Common mistakes: Buying a SIEM and expecting it to work out of the box. SIEMs require significant tuning, rule development, and ongoing maintenance to be effective. If you don’t have a security analyst to manage it, the SIEM becomes an expensive log storage system.6. Vulnerability Management
What it does: Identifies known vulnerabilities in your systems, applications, and infrastructure so you can patch or mitigate them before attackers exploit them. What to look for: Automated scanning of internal and external assets on a regular cadence. Accurate asset discovery — you can’t patch what you don’t know about. Risk-based prioritization that accounts for exploitability, exposure, and business context, not just CVSS scores. Integration with your patch management or IT operations workflow. Reporting that helps you track remediation progress over time. Questions to ask vendors: How do you prioritize vulnerabilities — is it just CVSS score, or do you factor in real-world exploitability and asset criticality? How do you handle assets that can’t be patched (legacy systems, OT devices)? What’s the false positive rate on your scans? Can you integrate with our ticketing system to automatically create remediation tasks? How do you handle cloud assets and containers? Common mistakes: Running vulnerability scans but not acting on the results. A scan that identifies 500 vulnerabilities is useless if nobody triages, prioritizes, and remediates them. Pair your scanning tool with a clear remediation workflow and SLAs.7. Security Awareness Training
What it does: Educates your employees to recognize and report phishing attempts, social engineering, and other threats that target human behavior rather than technology. What to look for: Engaging, regularly updated content that reflects current threats — not annual compliance videos from five years ago. Simulated phishing campaigns that test employees with realistic scenarios and provide immediate feedback. Reporting that identifies high-risk individuals and departments. Short, frequent training modules (5 to 10 minutes monthly) rather than annual hour-long sessions. Content that’s available in the languages your workforce needs. Questions to ask vendors: How often is your content library updated? Can you customize phishing simulations to mimic the specific threats our industry faces? What happens when an employee fails a simulation — is the follow-up training automatic? Do you provide metrics we can report to leadership (click rates over time, reporting rates, training completion)? Can the platform integrate with our email security tool so reported phishing goes to the right place? Common mistakes: Treating security awareness as a check-the-box compliance exercise. The goal isn’t 100% training completion — it’s measurable behavior change. Track phishing simulation click rates, reporting rates, and time-to-report over time.How to Evaluate Vendors: A Practical Framework
When comparing products in any category, evaluate across five dimensions: Effectiveness is the most important and hardest to assess. Ask for third-party test results (AV-TEST, MITRE ATT&CK evaluations, SE Labs), customer references in your industry, and proof-of-concept trials in your environment. Marketing claims are not evidence. Operational fit means the tool works with your team’s skills, your existing infrastructure, and your operational cadence. A powerful tool that requires a dedicated full-time analyst to operate is the wrong tool for a team of two. Integration determines whether the tool plays well with the rest of your stack. Ask specifically about API availability, pre-built integrations with tools you already use, and data export capabilities. Siloed tools that don’t share data create blind spots. Total cost of ownership goes beyond the license fee. Factor in implementation time, training, ongoing management effort, and any infrastructure requirements. A tool that costs 30,000 in staff time to operate costs $40,000. Vendor viability matters because you’re entering a relationship, not making a one-time purchase. Assess the vendor’s financial stability, customer retention rates, product roadmap, and support quality. A startup with a great product that goes out of business in two years leaves you rebuilding.What Order to Build In
If you’re starting from scratch, build in this order. Each layer provides the foundation for the next. First, deploy MFA everywhere and get your identity and access management under control. Identity compromise is the leading attack vector, and no other security investment matters if attackers can log in with stolen credentials. Second, deploy endpoint protection across all devices. This gives you visibility into your most common attack surface and the ability to contain threats at the device level. Third, implement email security beyond your native provider’s built-in protections. This addresses the most common delivery mechanism for phishing and malware. Fourth, establish backup and recovery with at least one immutable or air-gapped copy. This is your safety net for when everything else fails. Fifth, add security monitoring — either a managed service or, if you have the staff, a SIEM — to gain visibility across your environment and detect threats that bypass your preventive controls. Sixth, implement vulnerability management to systematically identify and remediate weaknesses before attackers find them. Seventh, launch security awareness training to address the human element that technology alone can’t solve. This order isn’t rigid — your specific risk profile may shift priorities. But for most SMBs, it represents the highest-impact sequence.Key Takeaways
Building a cybersecurity stack isn’t about buying the most expensive tools or checking the most boxes. It’s about covering the fundamentals well, choosing tools that match your team’s capacity, and ensuring everything works together. Start with identity, build outward, and never deploy a tool you don’t have the capacity to operate.ContraForce provides a unified security operations platform that integrates across your existing stack. Learn more about our platform.