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06/09/2026 5:18 pm
TL;DR: A 224% ROI, $3.8 million NPV, over 25% breach-risk reduction, and 2.5 hours of weekly analyst effort were modeled in Forrester Consulting’s TEI study for a 20,000-endpoint composite enterprise, according to Airlock Digital. The finding reinforces that deny-by-default application control is now as much a governance and operational discipline as an endpoint security control.
NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Airlock Digital: 224% ROI and $3.8M NPV: Forrester TEI Study Quantifies Airlock Digital Benefits
By the numbers:
- The composite organisation achieved more than 25% reduction in breach risk over three years.
Questions worth separating out
Q: How should security teams implement application control without creating too many exceptions?
A: Start with a small, known-good software baseline, then expand approval lists only where business need is clear and repeatable.
Q: Why does deny-by-default reduce endpoint risk more effectively than reactive detection alone?
A: Because it prevents unauthorised code from executing in the first place, which removes the attacker’s easiest path to malware deployment, script abuse, and tool staging.
Q: What are the signs that application control is failing in practice?
A: Frequent one-off exceptions, inconsistent policies across similar endpoints, and a growing software inventory gap are the clearest warning signs.
Practitioner guidance
- Build a governed software approval workflow Define who can approve executables, scripts, and publishers, and require every exception to have an owner, expiry, and review record.
- Link allowlisting to endpoint standard builds Use hardened device baselines and standard software catalogs so policy starts from known-good software rather than continuous ad hoc approvals.
- Track exception volume as a control-health metric Measure how many exceptions are granted, how long they remain active, and whether they recur across device groups or business units.
What's in the full report
Airlock Digital's full study covers the operational detail this post intentionally leaves for the source:
- The composite-enterprise assumptions behind the 224% ROI and $3.8 million NPV model.
- The cost and benefit breakdown across breach reduction, administration, and software consolidation.
- The low-touch management assumptions behind the 2.5 hours per week figure.
- The customer interview methodology used to build the TEI analysis.
👉 Read Airlock Digital's Forrester TEI study on application control economics →
Application control economics: what it means for endpoint teams?
Explore further
06/09/2026 5:19 pm
Application control is a trust-governance problem, not just an endpoint hardening feature. The central value of allowlisting is that it converts software execution into an explicit governance decision. That makes the control relevant to broader security architecture, because approved code paths become a boundary around what attackers can run after they land. For practitioners, the lesson is that software approval and exception handling are governance workflows, not operational afterthoughts.
A question worth separating out:
Q: What is the difference between application control and traditional endpoint detection?
A: Application control decides what is allowed to run, while endpoint detection observes and investigates activity after it begins. The two are complementary, but they solve different problems. Application control is preventative and policy-led, whereas detection is investigative and response-led. Practitioners need both, but not as substitutes for each other.
👉 Read our full editorial: Application control economics and breach reduction in endpoint security
