Should a business's cybersecurity budget be separate from the overall IT budget? Or are there advantages to making it part of IT funding from your POV?
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Director of Information Security6 months ago
You should break it out into its own dedicated budget, even if it falls under the purview of IT. Otherwise, you'll make compromising decisions that hamper security.CIO6 months ago
"The cybersecurity budget comprises two essential components to effectively safeguard the organization's digital assets and operations. Firstly, the protection of business applications, which directly contributes to the functionality and resilience of specific business units, should be integrated into their respective budgets. This ensures accountability and transparency, as expenses related to securing business-critical applications are directly attributable to the units benefiting from them.Secondly, common security expenditures, which encompass overarching cybersecurity measures such as threat detection, incident response, and compliance initiatives, should be consolidated within the cybersecurity budget. By centralizing these essential security functions, organizations can prioritize and allocate resources based on enterprise-wide risk assessments and strategic imperatives, rather than dispersing them across various IT initiatives.
This delineation ensures that cybersecurity investments are aligned with both business objectives and overarching security priorities, optimizing resource utilization and enhancing the organization's overall cyber resilience."
CISO in Consumer Goods6 months ago
The simple answers are Yes and Yes. What works for us is while it is part of the overall IT budget so we can calculate the overall IT spend as a percentage of sales we categorize each budget line item. We do this so we can calculate percentage of the IT budget for Salaries, Infrastructure, AppDev, BI, HR, Marketing, Finance, Supply Chain, Security, etc...CISO6 months ago
We use a main category for Security within the IT Budget as it's under my control as well.
If you identify and quantify your cybersecurity risks, you should be able to understand where you have the greatest gaps in security and justify budget for risk mitigation projects for these gaps.
Being able to separate your cybersecurity budget might also bring clarity when you try to compare to industry peers (either measured as an absolute number or a % of revenue).
Hope this helps.