“Enterprises typically will purchase products that meet their functionality requirements, fall within budget, and pass subjective evaluation. However, just as important is a product’s capability to integrate with other controls—or its interoperability readiness—and some security controls offer better out-of-the-box readiness than others.

Time and again, NSS Labs has found that products that do not integrate well can be difficult to deploy, optimize, and use. The full value of a security control cannot be realized until it is integrated into and operationalized for an enterprise environment. This brief looks at the concept of interoperability, recommends questions to ask to gain insight into a product’s integration capabilities, and provides a method by which to estimate the costs of integrating the product into an enterprise environment.”