Allocating cybersecurity budget is a complex task for the Chief Information Security Officer. CISO’s should consider these five main categories when trying to allocate your funds: Compliance, Ongoing Risk Assessments, Ongoing Security Training, New Business Initiatives, and Business Priority Shifts. The effectiveness of budget allocation significantly impacts the organization’s overall cybersecurity resilience and risk mitigation.
Cybersecurity Budget Breakdown
The amount of money businesses spend on cybersecurity relative to their total budgets varies widely by industry and from organization to organization (Cybersecurity Budget Breakdown and Best Practices, n.d.). It’s difficult to come up with an exact number due to all of the different variables that are involved. When allocating their budgets you should consider the five main categories.
Compliance is the first main category in the budget. In the healthcare sector, for example, HIPAA defines data privacy and security requirements to protect individuals’ medical records and other personal health information (Cybersecurity Budget Breakdown and Best Practices, n.d.). If you don’t meet these regulations you could potentially get some big fines.
Ongoing existing risk assessments is the second of the 5 main categories. CISO’s should monitor security effectiveness regularly. If risks go higher than agreed limits, they discuss with management for a bigger budget or reallocating. This involves investing in tools like cyber insurance and penetration testing.
Training is the third and the most important category in my eyes. Human errors are the threat. It’s imperative that regular training is conducted to help become proactive against growing cyberthreats.
New business initiatives is the forth category in the budget. CISO’s need to evaluate and allocate security budget for any new business initiative to ensure the overall security of the company and its customers. For example, marketing departments may outsource content creation to a third-party provider overseas, or customer support may decide to store all customer support cases in a cloud storage platform (Cybersecurity Budget Breakdown and Best Practices, n.d.).
The last of the five categories is business priority shifts. Since the pandemic, a lot of people have shifted from working in the office to working from home. From employee onboarding — and offboarding — to employee use of shared home routers, local offline data storage, personal devices and home privacy needs in video conferences, all require security adaptations and budget reallocation (Cybersecurity Budget Breakdown and Best Practices, n.d.).
Each business is going to be different when it comes to exactly how much and what percentage goes where when talking about allocation. It’s important to balance investing in people through education and training with strengthening technical defenses using cybersecurity technologies.
Conclusion
In conclusion, assigning budgets for cybersecurity involves considering five key areas: Compliance, Ongoing Risk Assessments, Ongoing Security Training, New Business Initiatives, and Business Priority Shifts. While the allocations may be different for each business, a balanced approach investing in training and technical defenses is crucial for robust cybersecurity.
Resources
Cybersecurity budget breakdown and best practices. (n.d.). SearchSecurity. https://www.techtarget.com/searchsecurity/tip/Cybersecurity-budget-breakdown-and-best-practices