Technical Debt and Cybersecurity: Challenges and Solutions

What is Technical Debt and Its Impact on Organizations

In the modern era, organizations face increasing cybersecurity challenges due to the complexities of the technical systems they rely on. This issue is known as "Technical Debt", estimated at billions of dollars globally. In the United States alone, estimates suggest that technical debt reaches $2.41 trillion. For this reason, it is not surprising that 87% of IT leaders consider reducing technical debt a top priority for their organizations. A recent survey by the Enterprise Strategy Group reveals that respondents express growing concern about security risks, high operating costs, and other challenges. But how has this application-related technical debt accumulated? What are its effects on cybersecurity? And most importantly: what strategies can organizations adopt to overcome this problem?

At its core, technical debt arises from implementing previous technical solutions that no longer align with current business needs. Organizations often face difficult choices when making technical decisions. Frequently, organizations seek the best solutions for their complex problems, carefully balancing network priorities, cybersecurity, and end-user experience. But at other times, under the pressure of the need for speed or due to limited resources, organizations resort to temporary and quick fixes, leading to increased complexity in their technical environment.

How Technical Debt Accumulates and Exacerbates Security Risks?

Accumulation of technical debt: one decision after another. As business requirements increase – whether due to growth, digital transformation, or external disruptions – IT and security teams make practical choices and adopt specific solutions to keep pace with developments. But these additional software purchases gradually accumulate and quietly transform into a difficult-to-manage technical web. Its repercussions are clearly evident in the form of fragmented IT infrastructure, inconsistent user experiences, inflated operational costs, and unstable IT environments. Additionally, these debts significantly increase the potential cyberattack surface. This effect can be likened to the Swiss cheese model, where organizations spend more time patching security vulnerabilities and maintaining legacy systems rather than focusing on innovation.

According to a Gartner survey of 162 large organizations between August and October 2024, organizations use an average of 45 different cybersecurity tools. This multitude creates a vicious cycle of continuous patches and modifications. The cost is not limited to lost time only; the Enterprise Strategy Group revealed that 47% of IT leaders directly link rising operational costs to supporting outdated infrastructure. Also, 36% of them pointed to increasing security vulnerabilities as a growing concern stemming from legacy technical systems.

Regardless of the justifications that led to past technical decisions, these decisions directly impact organizations' current systems, leading to increased complexity, maintenance burdens, and cybersecurity risks.

Technical Debt and SaaS Applications: Access Challenges

The problem of technical debt is exacerbated with the Software as a Service (SaaS) model. Currently, most modern applications used in organizations rely on the SaaS model. The survey showed that more than half of the participants reported that SaaS applications and older web-based applications account for 61% of their total application usage, and most of these applications are classified as "business-critical".

Within enterprise environments, these critical applications require secure and modern access methods. However, achieving secure access often came at the expense of ease of use. Traditional access solutions such as Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) and virtual VPN networks were not designed with SaaS-dependent organizations as a priority. This creates challenges for users, increases burdens on IT teams, and limits visibility, control, and threat detection once users access the application.

Monitoring these applications necessitates additional solutions, further increasing the accumulation of technical debt. Interestingly, 72% of respondents expressed a desire to abandon VDI solutions. With the accelerating expansion of SaaS adoption, this discrepancy between access architecture and application delivery has grown, hindering flexibility, raising risk levels, and complicating the overall user experience. Consequently, technical debt is not merely a minor inconvenience; rather, it is a major obstacle hindering security and organizational efficiency as a whole.

Addressing Technical Debt by Improving the Access Point (Browser)

Given that the browser serves as the primary interface for employees in modern organizations, it plays a pivotal role in accessing SaaS applications, internal applications, and digital workflows. Therefore, the most effective approach to address the challenge of application technical debt lies in rethinking the concept of the browser itself.

Popular browsers like Chrome and Edge, despite their high effectiveness for consumers, were not designed to meet the complex needs of organizations. This represents a significant security vulnerability, as 62% of sensitive corporate data is accessed via consumer browsers, and 35% of data breaches originate from these same browsers. These browsers require a complex ecosystem of additional tools – such as data loss prevention (DLP) systems, web gateways, Remote Browser Isolation (RBI), endpoint clients, and VPNs, among many others – in an attempt to secure browsing activity and protect sensitive data. Over time, these security and administrative layers have accumulated, contributing to the exacerbation of technical debt in the areas of security and application access, due to the continuous need for management, troubleshooting, and upgrades.

The Impact of AI Tool Proliferation on Technical Debt

The proliferation of AI tools further exacerbates the challenge of technical debt. In the early stages of AI adoption, end-users and organizations tend to choose multiple tools to address specialized use cases, often without a complete understanding of their impact on data protection and user experience. New competing products are expected to replace many of these tools almost as quickly as they emerge. Therefore, future technical decisions will need to address the hidden proliferation of AI tools and the new technical debt they generate.

Enterprise Browsers: An Innovative Solution for Technical Debt and Cybersecurity

Amidst these challenges, a new category of browsers has emerged: enterprise browsers, specifically designed for use in work environments. Gartner recognized this new browser category in 2023. In April of the same year, Evgeny Mirolyubov, Senior Director Analyst at Gartner, stated: "Secure Enterprise Browsers (SEBs) integrate enterprise security controls into the native web browsing experience, using a dedicated browser or an extension for existing browsers, rather than relying on additional controls at the endpoint or network layer."

Enterprise browsers fundamentally change how organizations approach application access. An enterprise browser simplifies the collection of technologies required to secure, manage, understand, and facilitate access to critical applications and data. With increasing regulatory scrutiny and the escalating complexity of cyber threats such as phishing, malware targeting browsers, and insider threats, organizations must re-evaluate access strategies, prioritizing security. Enterprise browsers provide granular session-level visibility and control, enabling the implementation of preventative measures and rapid response to security incidents.

These browsers have the potential to reduce reliance on traditional tools like VDI, VPNs, DLP systems, proxies, and various endpoint clients, removing layer after layer of technical debt and enabling secure, efficient, and scalable access.

Towards Secure Access Free of Technical Debt

For far too long, organizations have found themselves trapped in a vicious cycle, where legacy technical decisions limited their innovative capabilities. Years of accumulating legacy access tools, fragmented security controls, outdated application architectures, and isolated monitoring and authentication systems have created a complex web of technical debt. This web undermines performance, cybersecurity, and scalability at a time when seamless, secure, and optimized access to cloud environments has become more critical than ever. But finally, there is a way out of this cycle. By rethinking the role of the browser, forward-thinking organizations are not only reducing technical debt but also building a strong foundation for resilience needed to tackle the next generation of digital transformation challenges.