Integration projects go wrong when they start with a connector instead of a map. Before wiring anything together, spend a few hours documenting what you have, what each tool can say and hear, and where people are currently filling the gaps by hand. This walkthrough describes a lightweight way to do that.
1. List the tools and their owners
Start with a plain table. For each security-relevant tool, record its name, its purpose, the licence tier you hold and the person responsible for it. Include the less obvious items: the DNS filter someone set up years ago, the backup system’s alerting, the admin portal of your main SaaS platform. Licence tier matters because many integration features, such as conditional access or API access, sit behind specific editions.
2. Record what each tool produces
For each tool, note the data it emits: alerts, logs, risk scores, device compliance states. Record the transport too, whether syslog, a vendor API, a webhook or a built-in connector to another product. This column tells you what is available to integrate.
3. Record what each tool can consume
Now the other direction. Can the identity provider accept a device risk signal? Can the endpoint agent take an indicator list? Can the mail filter import a block list from elsewhere? Tools that consume signals are where automation can act. Tools that only produce are where you need a human or an orchestration layer.
4. Trace three real scenarios
Pick scenarios that matter to your organisation and walk each one through the stack:
- A user’s password is phished and used from an unfamiliar location.
- Malware is detected on a laptop belonging to someone with admin rights.
- An employee leaves at short notice.
For each, write down every step from first signal to finished response, and mark which steps are automatic and which rely on someone noticing, logging in somewhere and acting. The manual steps are your integration backlog.
5. Mark the blind spots
Some steps will have no signal at all. Perhaps sign-in logs are kept briefly in the identity console and never exported, or a legacy application has local accounts outside single sign-on. Mark these separately. Blind spots are coverage problems, and they usually need fixing before any automation built on top of them means much.
6. Rank by risk reduced per unit of effort
You now have a list of manual steps and blind spots. Score each roughly: how likely is the scenario, how much damage does the delay allow, and how hard is the fix? Removing a leaver’s access in one place through SCIM, rather than in five places by hand, is often a quick win. A full log pipeline is valuable but larger. Doing the quick, high-value items first builds confidence and frees time for the bigger ones.
7. Keep the map current
The inventory only helps if it stays accurate. Review it whenever a tool is added, renewed or retired, and attach it to change requests that touch security tooling. It doubles as onboarding material for anyone new to the environment.
Where to go from here
If the map shows a lot of unused capability, read whether you need new tools or better integration. If identity sits at the centre of most of your scenarios, the answer on connecting SSO and MFA to other tools sets out a sensible order. The integration services page describes how this mapping feeds a full engagement.
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