With the proliferation of security applications designed to combat specific IT breaches, many organisations are finding management of their security systems unnecessarily complicated, time consuming and costly. Desktops are littered with a wide range of applications for everything from anti-virus to encryption. And in today's economic climate, it is more important than ever for businesses to ensure they are gaining the most value out of their current IT assets rather than reactively deploying new services, which are often proven superfluous following an IT assessment. This article explores methods to reduce costs and streamline security deployments through consolidation and optimisation solutions. © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.