Having a sufficient security budget is paramount to ensuring an organization’s cybersecurity program is well implemented. There’s every possibility for this budgetary figure to increase largely year after year and stakeholders keep wondering where all the money is going.
In some cases, the money is well spent while in some, there’s no tangible value that can be linked with the exhaustion of an entire “fat budget”.
I’ve enumerated below, four reasons for high-security spending and how to identify and eliminate budgetary items that aren’t needed.
1 – Buying fancy tools: So you’ve just seen a demo of a security tool and you’re “wowed”. No need to ask further questions, just move to the next stage where you send a RFP to the vendor and move on to the last stage where you actually buy. You need to ask questions like:
· What value will this tool add to our enterprise security posture?
· Does this tool in anyway help our organization meet its business objectives?
· Is there a real need for this tool?
· Can we survive without this tool?
· What problem does this tool solve?
Organizations need to prioritize buying a security solution based on its value above buying based on awesome features.
2 – Buying solutions and services emotionally: Company XYZ has offered to build you an in house SOC and train the prospective analysts for let’s say 10 USD (let’s assume this is a fortune). You go ahead without asking questions for one or more of the following reasons:
· You’ve heard of company XYZ around and learnt that they’re quite good (This is pure hearsay. Test them out first)
· The CEO or Founder of company XYZ is your good friend so you’re trying to do him/her a favor or return one back
· You’re pleased with the salesperson’s personality and/or sales presentation so you’re convinced the company will deliver for that high price
Emotional purchases will most likely make you miss out on getting complete value because you haven’t been logical/analytical in determining the total value that can be gotten from that purchase and other prospective purchases.
3 – Not reviewing budgets collectively before approval: Budgets should be reviewed in house first before submission for approval. This review can help to identify unneeded and overly expensive items. It can also help identify items described in points 1 and 2 above that have to be budgeted for ahead.
4 – Not outsourcing a part of your security operations: It’s been proven time and time again that it’s economically/financially wise to outsource a part of your security operations to a managed security service provider. Doing this, you no longer have to purchase tools for security operations but you simply subscribe for that same service using an MSSP. They handle operations like security monitoring, security tool configuration and maintenance, etc.
You simply pay an annual subscription fee (billed quarterly or every six months), converting capital expenditure to operating expenditure. MSSPs also save you the headache that comes with running your security operations yourself.
You can reduce your budget/spending by nearly 80% or even more when you use an MSSP.
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