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Security tool sprawl can burden managed service providers (MSPs) with recurring software, integration, training and labor costs. But the available evidence does not establish that those costs exceed ransomware losses. The headline’s “more than” is a question, not a proven financial comparison: the cited sources do not match tool-sprawl expenses against ransomware costs for the same MSPs, period and cost categories.
What the evidence says about tool sprawl
Too many disconnected security products are a practical problem for MSPs and their customers, even without a verified industry-wide price tag. Barracuda’s MSP Customer Insight Report 2025 found that 52% of surveyed organizations turn to an MSP for security support when the number of security tools becomes unmanageable. That was the most common reason given in the report. Among respondents in manufacturing, the figure was 60%.
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Those figures describe customer-reported demand for help; they are not percentages of MSP spending, nor do they show how much a provider pays to operate a fragmented stack. Barracuda also reports that tools from different vendors may not integrate, making security harder and more expensive to manage.
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Where the recurring costs come from
Tool sprawl can raise operating costs through several channels. ITPro’s account of the issue describes how supporting customers across different endpoint, SIEM, vulnerability-management and other platforms can compound day-to-day work. These are plausible cost mechanisms, not a measured total for the MSP industry.
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- Licenses and platforms: Maintaining separate products can mean paying for multiple tools and overlapping capabilities.
- Integration and administration: Staff may have to connect systems, manage separate consoles and troubleshoot gaps between products.
- Expertise and training: Technicians need to understand different interfaces, workflows and product-specific procedures.
- Workflow friction: Switching between tools and customer environments can slow investigation and routine ticket handling.
Other vendor-published surveys point to operational friction but do not provide a comparable dollar calculation. Heimdal and FutureSafe’s State of MSP Agent Fatigue 2025 surveyed 80 North American MSPs in the first half of 2025 and reported integration problems and alert fatigue. Sophos’s 2026 MSP Perspectives Report describes technology and automation fragmentation as a source of inefficiency; its landing page identifies 800 MSP partners across seven countries. These findings are bounded survey evidence, not a census or a financial estimate.
Coro’s summary of CRN research says 45% cite rising operational costs as a top challenge and describes low satisfaction with security-tool return on investment. The page does not supply enough methodological detail to turn those findings into a representative cost estimate.
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Why ransomware remains a serious cost and risk
Ransomware is not just a line item for an MSP’s own recovery. When a provider is compromised, its access, systems or services can put multiple supported businesses at risk. NIST’s Improving Cybersecurity of Managed Service Providers explains that an MSP’s vulnerabilities can increase the vulnerabilities of the businesses it serves, and identifies secure architecture as a way to reduce exposure to attacks such as ransomware.
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Why a “more than ransomware” ranking is unproven
A credible ranking needs comparable totals. The sources cited here discuss the mechanisms and operational signals behind tool sprawl, and explain why MSP incidents can have downstream consequences. They do not provide matched figures for recurring tool costs and ransomware losses across the same MSP population and time period.
Nor can a survey about perceived threats substitute for that accounting. ChannelPro’s 2026 reporting of a CyberSmart survey found that 46% of respondents viewed inflation and rising costs as a greater threat to customers, compared with 41% who named ransomware and malware. Those are perceptions about customer threats—not measured tool-sprawl expenses, ransomware losses or proof that one cost exceeds the other.
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A useful comparison would need to define the MSP population and geography, cover the same period, and disclose what each total includes. On the tool side, that could mean licenses, integration, administration, training and workflow time. On the ransomware side, it could include response, restoration, downtime, customer support and downstream losses. It would also need to distinguish direct costs to the MSP from costs borne by customers, and measured figures from modeled estimates.
What an MSP can conclude now
Tool sprawl is worth reviewing as an operating-cost and security-management problem, but consolidation is not automatically a saving. An MSP assessing its stack can inventory overlapping tools, recurring fees, integration work and staff time, then check whether fewer platforms would preserve required coverage and work with customer environments. The evidence cited here supports the case for measuring those burdens; it does not show that consolidation will always reduce total cost or risk.
The defensible conclusion is narrower than the headline: fragmented security tools can create persistent, avoidable operational friction, while ransomware can carry severe direct and downstream consequences. Available evidence does not establish which costs more for MSPs overall.
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