Subscriptions should help your business, not hinder it. However, when you manage a plethora of subscriptions at once, it might harm your finances and create security gaps.
As subscriptions build up, you can quickly lose track of what each tool does and whether employees still use it. “Subscription fatigue” is the stress that comes with having to manage too many subscriptions at once.
IT managers field access requests for tools they did not know the company used. Employees forget which platform holds which files, so they create accounts on new services instead of searching for existing ones. Over time, the business ends up paying for idle seats, forgotten trials that converted into paid plans, and duplicate tools purchased by different departments without coordination.
Consolidation is the main way to solve subscription fatigue. For example, an all-in-one digital security tool can provide you with a VPN and next-gen antivirus under the same subscription.
How Subscription Fatigue Creates Security Risks
Businesses adopt new tools with increasing regularity, which often leads to “software sprawl”. When you rapidly accumulate applications, software, and services, you create a haphazard tech stack. The higher the number of services subscribed to, the bigger the attack surface.
Recent research suggests that 51% of mid-market organizations have between 100 and 300 tools in their tech stacks. For IT managers, keeping track of 300 tools presents significant security challenges.
As the tech stack expands, unsafe digital habits may also be adopted. To keep up with the increasing number of tools, managers could fail to properly assess safety. Configuration gaps may also appear. These gaps create inconsistent security controls and weaknesses for cybercriminals to exploit.
Businesses Deprioritize and Duplicate Security Tools
As the number of subscriptions grows, businesses often remove tools they consider less important. They often cancel cybersecurity tools first.
Cybersecurity tools don’t actually contribute to business operations in the same way that productivity, communication, or customer-facing tools do. For example, VPNs and password managers don’t generate revenue or help employees complete tasks.
Password managers help strengthen your cybersecurity. However, many businesses fail to recognize their value. Users had reused 94% of passwords exposed in recent breaches across multiple accounts. If more businesses adopted password managers, employees would be less likely to reuse passwords. Attackers would be prevented from accessing multiple systems with a single compromised password.
Businesses often turn to cheaper, less secure alternatives, which increases the attack surface further. Poor tool management can also result in overlapping features, as some tools may provide comparable privacy and network security functions.
Consolidation Can Make Security Easier to Maintain
You can tackle subscription fatigue through consolidation. By opting for consolidated tools, you can reduce the number of subscriptions your team needs to manage.
Instead of paying two separate vendors, you’re getting more value out of one monthly or annual payment. However, consolidation doesn’t mean you have to cancel all current subscriptions in favor of cheaper tools. Review your tech stack to determine which tools can be kept and which can be consolidated.
Your procurement and IT team should ask the following questions about each subscription:
- What function does the tool perform?
- Are any capabilities duplicated?
- Is the subscription actively used?
- How much administration does the subscription require?
- What other services can the tool carry out?
- Can another subscription provide the same functions, in addition to other essential functions?
The review process will narrow down your subscription list without removing any essential tools. It will also highlight which tools can be consolidated.
Subscription Management Should Be an Ongoing Process
Consolidating your tools should not be a one-time thing. Your business will continue to grow, and you’ll need to subscribe to an increasing number of new tools. Experts predict that global spending on digital transformation will reach $3.9 trillion by 2027. More tools, more subscriptions, and more stress.
If you fail to regularly review your business subscriptions, fatigue can quickly return. You should conduct a subscription management software audit at regular intervals. During each audit, assess whether your team still uses each tool and whether it provides good value. You’ll also be able to identify new instances of feature overlap as well as consolidation opportunities.
Before adding a tool to the tech stack, consider whether an existing subscription can provide the same functionality.
