The Economics of Brutalist Security: Why Simple Beats Sophisticated

Security budgets are under unprecedented scrutiny. CFOs demand ROI calculations for every security investment, CISOs face pressure to reduce operational costs, and security teams must prove their value beyond compliance checkboxes. In this environment, the economics of security matter more than ever—and the math increasingly favors brutalist approaches over sophisticated architectures.

The traditional security industry narrative assumes that more sophisticated threats require more sophisticated defenses. This logic has driven organizations to deploy increasingly complex security stacks with overlapping capabilities, specialized tools for narrow use cases, and armies of analysts to operate them. But when you examine the total cost of ownership and actual security outcomes, Brutalist Security delivers superior economic value.

The Hidden Costs of Security Sophistication

Most organizations dramatically underestimate the true cost of their complex security architectures. The sticker price of security tools represents only a fraction of the total investment required to make them effective.

Integration tax is crushing budgets. Modern security environments typically include dozens of different tools that must work together. Each integration point requires engineering time, ongoing maintenance, and specialized knowledge. Organizations consistently find that they spend multiple times the initial licensing cost on integration and maintenance over the tool's lifecycle. Professional services, custom connectors, and ongoing tuning transform modest initial investments into massive operational burdens.

Staffing costs compound exponentially. Sophisticated security tools require sophisticated operators. A properly tuned machine learning-based user behavior analytics platform needs data scientists, security analysts familiar with statistical methods, and engineers who understand both security and data architecture. These specialized roles command premium salaries and are increasingly difficult to hire and retain. The fully-loaded cost of senior security personnel continues to escalate, and many organizations struggle to fill critical positions for extended periods.

False positive management is expensive. Complex detection systems generate enormous volumes of alerts that require human investigation. Industry benchmarks suggest that enterprise SOCs investigate thousands of alerts monthly, with false positive rates often exceeding 95%. The cost of investigating false positives—including analyst time, infrastructure resources, and opportunity costs—can consume massive portions of security budgets. This doesn't include the opportunity cost of analysts chasing false leads instead of focusing on genuine threats.

Licensing complexity creates budget unpredictability. Sophisticated security tools often use complex licensing models based on data volume, user count, API calls, or processing capacity. These metrics can grow unpredictably, creating budget overruns and forcing difficult conversations about shutting down security capabilities during peak usage periods. Organizations frequently discover that their security tool costs multiply as they scale, often with little advance warning.

The Brutalist Security Economic Advantage

Brutalist Security approaches deliver measurable economic advantages across every cost category:

• Predictable, linear scaling costs: Brutalist controls like network segmentation, application allowlisting, and strict access controls scale predictably with organizational size. Adding new employees doesn't exponentially increase licensing costs or require additional specialized staff. The same policy framework that protects smaller organizations can protect larger ones with proportional rather than exponential cost increases.
• Reduced specialized staffing requirements: Simple, harsh controls can be implemented and maintained by generalist security and IT staff rather than specialized security professionals. A smaller security team can provide guidance to the network administrator, who can then manage firewall rules with clear business logic much more easily than tuning machine learning algorithms for anomaly detection. This approach reduces both salary costs and the risk of unfilled positions leaving security gaps.
• Elimination of alert fatigue costs: Brutalist Security generates fewer but higher-quality alerts because preventive controls help eliminate several attack vectors before they generate alerts. Instead of investigating thousands of potential threats monthly, security teams can focus on the handful of events that represent actual security control failures. This shift allows organizations to operate effective security programs with leaner teams while improving response quality.
• Infrastructure cost reduction: Complex security architectures require significant computing and storage resources for log collection, data processing, and analysis. Typical enterprise security deployments consume massive amounts of storage annually and require dedicated infrastructure for real-time processing. Brutalist approaches that prevent attacks rather than detecting them after the fact require less infrastructure investment.
• Simplified vendor management: Instead of managing relationships with dozens of security vendors, each with different contract terms, support models, and integration requirements, brutalist approaches allow organizations to standardize on fewer, more fundamental technologies. This consolidation reduces procurement overhead, simplifies vendor risk management, and increases negotiating leverage.

Measuring Brutalist Security ROI

Traditional security ROI calculations focus on prevented losses—a notoriously difficult metric to calculate accurately. Brutalist Security enables more concrete ROI measurements.

Operational cost reduction. Document the reduction in security staffing requirements, infrastructure costs, and vendor spending. Organizations that are already implementing brutalist controls, or similar approaches, report significant reductions in security team size while improving security outcomes. These savings provide clear ROI justification that executives can understand and validate.

Business process acceleration. Harsh but predictable security controls often enable faster business processes than complex approval workflows. When employees know exactly what's required for access, they can complete requests more efficiently than navigating sophisticated but unpredictable risk-based authentication systems.

Reduced compliance costs. Simple, well-documented security controls are easier to audit and demonstrate to regulators. Organizations already applying the Brutalist Security architectures, or working on similar simplified approaches, typically spend significantly less on compliance preparation and audit support compared to those with complex, integrated security stacks.

Risk reduction quantification. Brutalist controls enable more accurate risk quantification because they eliminate entire attack vectors rather than attempting to detect and respond to attacks in progress. The attack surface reduction from application allowlisting, network segmentation, and strict access controls can be measured and translated into risk reduction metrics that resonate with executive leadership.

The Transition Economics

Moving from complex security architectures to brutalist approaches requires upfront investment, but organizations should see rapid payback.

Organizations must acknowledge that their existing security tool investments may not deliver expected returns. However, continuing to operate expensive, ineffective security programs costs more than transitioning to simpler approaches. The key is calculating total cost of ownership over multiple years rather than focusing on current budget cycles.

You can start small, and grow from there. Brutalist Security implementation can be phased to minimize disruption and spread costs over multiple budget cycles. Starting with network segmentation and access control changes requires minimal new technology investment while delivering immediate security and cost benefits.

The key is investing in the right spots and understanding that the initial investment will generate savings rapidly. For example, moving to Brutalist Security requires retraining security teams and updating incident response procedures. However, these training costs are typically offset quickly by reduced staffing requirements and simplified operations.

Building the Economic Case

When presenting Srutalist Security economics to executive leadership, focus on total cost of ownership comparisons and business outcome metrics rather than technical security measures:

• Present multi-year cost projections that include all staffing, infrastructure, and vendor costs for both current complex architectures and proposed brutalist approaches. Include risk-adjusted budgets that account for the high probability of cost overruns in complex security programs.
• Demonstrate how brutalist approaches enable business agility by eliminating security as a bottleneck for new initiatives. When security controls are simple and predictable, business teams can plan around them rather than waiting for complex security reviews.
• Quantify the opportunity cost of current security approaches. Calculate how much productive work your security team could accomplish if they weren't managing alert fatigue and tool integration challenges. This analysis often reveals that sophisticated security programs are preventing organizations from addressing fundamental security hygiene issues.

To Close

The economics of cybersecurity are changing. Organizations that recognize this shift and embrace brutalist approaches will achieve better security outcomes at lower cost. Those that continue investing in complex architectures will find themselves with expensive security programs that fail when it matters most.

The choice isn't between security and cost efficiency—it's between effective security that scales economically and sophisticated security theater that consumes budgets without delivering proportional protection. The economic logic increasingly favors the brutal approach.