Improved SecOps Productivity, and Third-party Pentesting and Vulnerability Scanner Savings Returned $1.63 Value per Every Dollar Spent.
Forrester and Horizon3.ai, a leading provider of autonomous security solutions, today issued findings from a commissioned study conducted by Forrester, “The Total Economic ImpactTM of the NodeZero Platform, October 2023.”
The study shows how the composite organization studied received vulnerability and risk intelligence that exceeds traditional approaches through use of the NodeZero platform and achieved a three-year 63% return on investment (ROI). In addition, operations time savings freed up the equivalent of one member of their four-member security team to focus on other security initiatives.
Forrester found that penetration testing with Horizon3.ai NodeZero saved participants $325K+/Year in improved secops productivity, and third-party pentesting and vulnerability scanner costs. Customers recognized $1.63 value per every dollar spent.
Six Horizon3.ai customers were interviewed by Forrester Consulting, from entertainment, manufacturing, healthcare, and construction organizations. The quantified benefits they experienced formed the framework for Forrester’s Total Economic Impact (TEI). By aggregating the customers’ characteristics, Forrester created a composite company with 2,000 employees and $500 million in annual revenue for its analysis. Forrester’s multistep approach included an evaluation of the costs, benefits, flexibility, and risk factors yielded from the investment in NodeZero for this profile, while also comparing NodeZero to those customers’ earlier penetration testing and vulnerability scanning approaches.
Key findings for the benefits and cost savings over a three-year period were improvement in security operations productivity by 30% worth $348,000, avoided costs of $255,000 by eliminating third-party penetration tests, and savings of $206,000 from reduced vulnerability scanner expenses. This resulted in a financial benefit of $809,000 for this composite organization, and a total value of $1.63 for each dollar spent. The study also highlights many additional security and business benefits that provided significant value but were not quantified in the study.
“Cost, time, and labor savings that deliver significant ROI were core to our original design of NodeZero and remain core to our enhancements as the platform continues to scale. We know that NodeZero is delivering concrete and measurable results; we hear it every day from our channel partners and customers that range from Global 100 heavyweights to small educational organizations,” said Snehal Antani, CEO of Horizon3.ai.
“We chose midsize companies in our user base with revenues ranging from $500 million to $1.5 billion for this independent analysis by Forrester, an esteemed research firm.”
Study participants weigh in
Participants reveal a common thread throughout the study about their key challenges prior to adopting NodeZero. They included expensive, inconsistent, and ineffective third-party penetration tests, lack of exploitable vulnerability prioritization, and how the use of siloed or underperforming security tools led to poor insights.
The director of IT security at the manufacturing organization said, “We use [NodeZero] very heavily and regularly. It is an incredible tool … Horizon3.ai is an absolutely phenomenal vendor. They’re just constantly exceeding my expectations. It’s a great product, it’s a great team, and it massively helped us secure both our company and when we did an acquisition about a year ago.”
“When we had [third-party penetration testers], it would take four to six weeks to figure out exactly what we would work on in what order, and we would never be able to do everything. We would target 33% to half of the report, and what would happen is maybe two-thirds of the things we thought we addressed were fixed, but a third of them would reappear on the report the next year. Meaning that even though we thought we resolved it, we really didn’t,” stated the CIO at the construction organization.
The director of information security at the entertainment organization shared, “Anything critical – the team will concentrate on those, get that fixed, and then go back and click verify, which is amazing. To me, that alone, on top of everything that [Horizon3.ai] offers, is priceless. Because it’s super fast, and it’s pinpointing exactly what I want to look for. Instead of running a five-day test, I can run [NodeZero] probably within the hour and I can get an answer.”
The identities of the customers are not disclosed in the study.
“The Total Economic ImpactTM of the NodeZero Platform, October 2023” is available at https://www.horizon3.ai/tei-study/.
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