As the CISO of your company, one of the critical events of the year is planning the forthcoming budget. It should be a fairly straightforward process. You know the cybersecurity risks out there. You have read the reports, and watched the blogs, and attended the cybersecurity conferences. Your head is full of all the potential risks circulating on the Internet superhighway. And, as the chief tech person in your company, you know all of the software and hardware elements required to build the cyber defenses to protect your company. Of course, things are never that easy.

In the good old days, security managers built their budget forecast for the coming year, then they sat back and waited for the budget to be approved. Life was relatively peaceful, with the greatest risks being one of your colleagues inadvertently bringing a computer virus into the company by playing an online video game. However, the cyberworld has evolved, dramatically. Things just got serious.

In an effort to fund their habits, cyber hackers have “followed the money”, and that money lies inside the thousands of interconnected companies around the world. And those hackers are mean—really mean. No longer content with poking around networks for a bit of fun, hackers have unleashed a whirlwind of tools that can essentially hold your company to ransom. From identity theft to phishing, and a dozen angles in between, the attack surface has changed. Now, all online businesses are in the firing line and strong cyber defense is the only way for those companies to avoid significant damage, and perhaps even financial ruin.

So, why is life more difficult for today’s CISO? The real issue lies with the standard company budgetary process. Tech managers summarize their activities over the previous year, showing where the company’s tech department saved the company from attack, and proposes future fund requirements that will mitigate any cyberattack in the future. The next step in the budget chain is to pass that proposal to the finance department where its content is scrutinized under a financial microscope. It is the job of the financial director and his team not only to minimize the spend for the coming year, but also to determine the efficacy of those measures proposed by the technical department.

The crunch often comes when financial analysts are not fully aware of extant cyber threats and those that might appear on the horizon. Additionally, financial management is unlikely to have the in-depth knowledge of networks, infrastructure, and computer software to manage those requirements correctly. What is really required is a tool that enables tech to talk to finance. Fortunately, this is something that Cynet, a leading cybersecurity company has just produced.

Using a simple, intuitive, yet comprehensive Excel template, Cynet has created a method of building a tech budget that translates bits and bytes into dollars and cents. This template contains a broad collection of pre-defined Excel macro formulae that display previous tech achievements, in terms of money saved, as well as potential savings in the future. Working on a monthly format basis, the template displays all of the financial implications of a tech budget in a clear and definitive way.

By tracking the specific products required by the company, along with full staffing requirements, as well as potential third-party outsourcing support, tech managers can now make the best financial case possible to their management colleagues.

The flow for building the tech budget proposal is simple and runs as follows:

  • Enter budget details into the spreadsheet
  • Complete all staffing and product parameters
  • Press “GO”

Cynet’s unique tech budget engine then presents your information in a monthly structure laying out the proposed budgetary requirements for the year to come. It really could not be easier.

You can download your Security Budget Plan builder by clicking here.

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