Lessons from F1’s Cost Cap applied to cybersecurity

At the half way point in the 2025 Formula 1 (F1) Championship, we’ve already witnessed some fantastic, albeit unexpected, results. During the pause, with no racing to watch, I found myself reflecting upon how similar the sport is to cybersecurity.

F1 teams face increasingly complex environments and challenges, and operate under strict budget constraints designed to level the competitive field and compel teams to innovate in order to achieve maximum performance from a limited set of resources.

For sports fans this might seem to be an unnatural interference in innovation, but cybersecurity teams face the same constraints.

Successful Formula 1 teams conquer budget limitations by avoiding viewing engineering challenges in isolation. Not only must every component create maximum impact, but it also needs to avoid creating debt elsewhere in the car.

A great example of this kind of integrated thinking in F1 actually comes from 2009, long before the spending cap was mandated, when the Brawn GP team won both drivers’ and constructors’ championships with significantly fewer resources than their competition.

The Brawn car featured an innovative double diffuser design which integrated multiple aerodynamic functions into a simplified, cohesive design. This integrated innovation gained the team a decisive competitive advantage on track.

For a long time, security teams have relied upon point solutions that promise to bring advantages to point problems. A hyper-focus on each micro-problem, however, has left the door wide open for debt to build up elsewhere in the stack.

That debt might be financial (literally paying twice when an integrated approach would require fewer vendors), or it might be performance related (for instance where user experience is hit hard by poorly engineered security architectures).

Security Services Edge (SSE) and Secure Access Service Edge (SASE) are the network security industry’s own double diffuser, and just as we saw out on track in 2009, a cohesive, consolidated, unified security architecture brings compound benefits.

Operational Efficiency and Improved Reliability

Just as an F1 team simplifies car setup profiles for speed vs reliability, cybersecurity consolidation streamlines IT management, and reduces overhead by standardizing policies and controls. With fewer tools and dashboards to manage, teams can focus more on strategic objectives.

In fact, a recent Forrester study into the economic impact of SSE concluded that teams using SSE achieved a 30% increase in running security and networking operations effectiveness. Imagine that advantage in the effectiveness of a motor racing team! It’s no small gain!

And imagine what Gene Haas (founder of the Haas F1 team) would say if you offered to get his cars over the finish line in 15% more races. Fundamentally, it’s unacceptable for security solutions to cause downtime for teams who are trying to be productive.

The aforementioned Forrester report, found that with SSE, organizations were able to save problems in under half the time, with a 60% reduction in mean-time-to-resolution and a 15% reduction in unplanned downtime.

Much like a pit crew shaving off precious seconds with every successful pit stop, these gains can mean the difference between a secure business and a compromised one.

Cost Reduction

Managing simplified OpEx costs for what you use now vs. what you use over 3-5 year multiple hardware refresh cycles, is a positive approach. Other cost reductions can be found in licensing fees, training costs and a decreased need for specialized personnel to maintain multiple solutions.

Again, Forrester proved the scale of advantage that can be found here when it concluded that payback on an SSE outlay occurred within just six months - and over three years organizations claimed back more than the same amount again (109% ROI in three years).

Improved Agility

F1 teams adapt strategies to fit changing race conditions, and consolidated cybersecurity solutions provide similar agility including improved response times to threats and more efficient management of policy updates.

As just one example, patching, which is the process of applying software updates to fix vulnerabilities and bugs in systems and applications, is often a hugely slow and manual process for security teams.

Forrester’s researchers found a massive speed advantage for patch management with SSE, with patching Service Level Agreements (SLAs) going from weeks to “effectively on-demand”.

You could say that SSE turns your team into the McLaren 2023 Qatar pit crew (who changed 4 tyres in 1.80 seconds!)

Enhanced Visibility and Control, while Reducing Risk

F1 teams rely on precise telemetry and data analysis to fine-tune performance. Similarly, consolidating cybersecurity and network solutions increases visibility into security posture across the organization.

A central view improves decision making and allows for the refinement of proactive security strategies. Additionally, reducing risk is a constant and critical goal of F1, where risk to life and limb is always in balance to performance.

A simplified and consolidated security stack reduces risk by closing gaps and limiting the attack surface, lowering the risk of misconfigurations and vulnerabilities.

Coming back to the Forrester researchers, they determined that organizations using SSE achieved an 80% reduction in the risk of a severe breach caused by an external attack, compared to their legacy approach.

Resource Optimization

Just as the spending cap in F1 requires teams to make careful decisions about where they allocate their limited resources, so security teams need to do the same with their annual budgets.

In both cases, leaders are looking to gain the maximum advantage, cutting waste and ensuring their teams are focusing on the things that will bring the most important gains.

By adopting a cost cap mentality (and channeling their inner Zak Brown, CEO of McLaren Racing), technology leaders can achieve a more secure, resilient and cost effective cybersecurity program that focuses on enhancing performance and efficiency whilst maximizing the value of the investment.

As the Brawn GP team discovered, superior results can be found in joined-up innovation and strategic architectural thinking, rather than by throwing money at problems, or viewing each challenge in isolation.

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