How to Budget for IT & Cybersecurity in 2023
Every year, heads of and c-level executives get together in their teams and devise a budget for the next financial year's IT and cybersecurity expenditure, but exactly how do you do this? In today's article, we’re going to be taking a look at how you can budget for both your IT and cybersecurity needs and what you should keep in mind when writing your budget plans.
How to Budget for IT & Cybersecurity in 2023
There’s no real answer. Everyone and every business are different when it comes to looking at the budget for IT and cybersecurity, but when it comes down to it – more people are looking for what should be covered when budgeting for the years IT and cybersecurity spend.
Here are just some things you should consider;
Supporting your Staff with Support and Security
Regardless of whether your staff are remote or working from the office, you and your staff will always have technical problems to some extent. Being able to support your staff no matter where they are in the world posed an initial challenge during the Covid-19 pandemic but has since been overhauled with fancy tech and services that you can use to ensure everyone can run at full speed, regardless of where they are.
75% of SMBs look to outsource their IT and Cybersecurity needs to an MSP (managed service provider) just like ourselves, with top-notch support packages and remote access tools allowing technical professionals to access and remediate any issues on any kind of device.
Not only this, but cybersecurity is becoming a massive focus area for many businesses around the world due to the ever-growing risk of cyber-attacks. With over 800,000 attacks happening every year, spending adequate time, and money on the best EDR solutions, and hardware/software that can prevent attacks is worth every penny.
Disaster Recovery and Backup Options
Although we hope that it never happens to you – disasters and massive cybersecurity attacks do happen and are unfortunately more common than you think. Small businesses are often held to ransom as they can be an easy target without the proper protection in place – but an easy way to avoid this is to have dedicated, well-designed and well-budgeted disaster recovery and backups in place.
Although it may feel unlikely to happen, utilizing a strong off-site backup solution for both your cloud and on-premise infrastructure emits any concerns relating to the loss of data, loss of site, or cyberattacks that may have occurred – such as ransom-like attacks. Although backups can also be infected, we hope that using a provider like ourselves would ensure you’re safe and secure no matter what the world throws at you.
Cybersecurity Hardening
As we mentioned above, ensuring your business is protected from all angles should play a major part in your budget, and in some cases may even overtake the budget for IT requirements and needs. In short, cyberattacks are becoming more and more frequent and are targeting SMBs that may not have adequate protection and policies in place to prevent, or recover from a cyberattack.
Although it can often be expensive, the investment into adequate or even over-the-top measures for your security practices, policies and overall cybersecurity hardware/software should be at the forefront of your budget plans. Don’t get into the mindset that it will not happen, because if it does – you’ll wish you had invested.
Growth Development (Innovation)
It’s hard to predict the future, but unless you want to be stagnant from modernization, and a technological point of view – then you will need to somewhat predict the future. Knowing that new products or aspects of your business are expected to grow, or the idea of onboarding new customers and staff can all play a part in your budget for the year.
Not to mention, that innovation budgets typically also have modernization plans included – so if you’re an all-on-premise business but want to make the jump to cloud-based hosting/servers, then this could also come under your growth and innovation portion of your IT and cybersecurity budget.
Cost Saving Investments
As part of writing your IT and cybersecurity budget, you should also be reviewing the previous budget – were you over or under? Are there any areas for improvement? Although it may seem a little counterintuitive to spend more money to save money – this is a very common budget entry for IT and cybersecurity budgets.
Spending a little bit of money as an investment to improve services but ultimately saving money, in the long run, can be a great way for directors of your business to see longer-term saving and allow a freed-up budget in years to come from said savings. An example of this might be on-site servers compared to cloud-based servers, as the overhead, licensing, and running costs are typically included but not noticeable on cloud scalable alternatives.
Training and Recruitment
As we’ve already touched on, many businesses who look at IT and Cybersecurity with open arms will often overlook training as a budget requirement. With hundreds if not thousands of certification bodies who would love to train your staff, picking up on some of the top-tier IT and Cybersecurity training providers is an investment in your staff and their abilities.
Certification providers such as CompTIA, Microsoft, and even BCS are all well-established and well-known in the IT world, but will provide you and your staff with invaluable experience and education on IT and Cybersecurity, and can even reduce the risks of a cyberattack from an insider source.
Recruitment can also play a part in your budget, but using an MSP such as Electric IT’s service packages can often replace, and if not reduce your budget whilst dealing with these costs ourselves, meaning you can spend less time and money worrying about the budget and training, and more time focusing on what's important.
How a trusted Partner can guide you through it
Being an MSP ourselves, we know exactly what companies and businesses alike go through when budgeting for their next year's IT and cybersecurity expenditure, but in reality – there are common traits for every business.
We pride ourselves in being an affordable, yet transparent service provider that has expertise in many technical areas allowing us to deliver world-class support and services to keep you moving no matter what happens. Want to learn more about our services? Be sure to let us know and get in touch here and find out more today.
Closing Notes
Overall, a budget for IT and Cybersecurity can be tough because in most cases, we can’t predict what the future holds for us. We hope this guide has helped you understand what to look out for when making your budget, and how we can help you manage your budget or even better – take your IT and Cybersecurity worries off your shoulders with our managed service offerings in both IT support and Cybersecurity.
Want to learn more about our offerings? Get in touch with our amazing team here, and find out how we can help you flourish.
