The cybersecurity industry is bursting at the seams with new technologies and solutions, as evidenced by the recent RSA conference. It’s overwhelming to imagine being a CISO trying to navigate this crowded field and make decisions on what products or technologies will best solve their organization’s security weaknesses. The current approach of adding new technologies to security stacks isn’t working, as security staffs are stretched thin managing every new technology while threat actors continue to break through protection technologies. To break this cycle, companies must start asking fundamental questions about security technologies to understand their true value. Questions about proactivity, intelligence, autonomy, scalability, and benefit to the stack as a whole can help identify the most valuable security technologies. It’s also important to evaluate existing technologies based on these questions to see how they’re serving the network and teams. The five key questions to ask are: Is the technology proactive or reactive? How much cyber intelligence can the technology leverage? Is the technology truly autonomous? How does the technology scale? Can the technology work easily with existing technologies? By answering these questions, companies can make more informed decisions about their cybersecurity investments and better protect their networks.