If your business plans to make cybersecurity a higher priority in 2025, you’re not alone. According to the CompTIA State of Cybersecurity 2025 report, 78% of the firms surveyed are making the same plans.

Cybersecurity best practices dictate that growing businesses should allocate between 10% to 20% of their IT budget to cybersecurity. How should you spend that money? With so many new and emerging threats, and an equal number of tools claiming to help growing businesses navigate those challenges, it’s very easy for business leaders to get lost in all the complexity.

Here are 3 tips that growing businesses can use to design a budget that has maximum impact and stays in control as your business grows and evolves.

Start with Business Goals and Build from There

When you’re putting together a cybersecurity budget, start by looking at your business goals. You want your spending to match up with where your biggest risks are, and that means not just doing a technical audit; you’ve got to think in depth about your business.

Depending on whether you’re in healthcare, services, manufacturing, or another field, you’ll have wildly different priorities, so make sure you’re focusing on the areas that need protection.

Here are some examples:

1. If you’re handling payment card data, you need to make sure you’re following PCI DSS rules. That means investing in things like point-to-point encryption, tokenization, and doing regular vulnerability assessments to avoid fines or losing customer trust.
2. If you’re a services firm, it’s all about keeping client data secure and protecting client privacy, so you’ll want to focus on locking down your email communications and file sharing. To that end, you’ll need to account for end-to-end encryption and secure cloud services.
3. If you’re in manufacturing, your priority should be operational technology (OT) security and protecting your IP. Cyberattacks on OT systems could disrupt production, so protecting this area is just as vital as data security in other industries.

Try to Anticipate Your Evolving Needs

If you want to have real resilience, you can’t address cybersecurity as an afterthought.

Instead, think about cybersecurity as an integral part of your long-term business strategy; it needs to be built in from the start. As you plan out your future business goals and map out the technology, you’ll need to support them, you should also begin integrating cybersecurity best practices right from the beginning.

Do you plan to move systems to the cloud next year? Make sure to set aside a part of your budget for better cloud security. If you plan on investing heavily into cloud, that could include Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) and Zero-Trust Network Access (ZTNA), which could add significant costs.

It’s all about being proactive and tackling upcoming threats by making smart, preemptive investments.

Moreover, upcoming regulations like the EU’s Network and Information Systems Directive (NIS2), updates to GDPR, and the U.S. Cyber Incident Reporting for Critical Infrastructure Act (CIRCIA) are introducing stricter requirements for breach reporting and security measures. As we head into the next year, be prepared to adjust your monitoring and incident response strategies to comply with these updates. This will inevitably bring additional costs.

Simplify to Keep Budgeting Under Control

With growing concerns around cybersecurity, increasing endpoints, and the rise of IoT systems, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed by the sheer number of tools that seem necessary to cover all the bases. As businesses expand, they often add more solutions to cover every potential threat.

Remember: Piling on more security tools doesn’t usually lead to a big improvement in security.

Often, these tools don’t integrate well with each other and may drain your security budget. Instead of making things easier, you’re likely to end up with a bunch of tools and offerings from various vendors that don’t talk to each other properly.

To streamline your budget, look for ways to consolidate tools and simplify your cybersecurity technology without compromising defenses. This can lower costs and provide operational efficiency.

How Much Is Cyber Insurance Going to Cost?

In this risky landscape, businesses are increasingly turning to cybersecurity insurance. However, as cyber threats escalate, so do insurance premiums.

Insurers are adjusting their rates to reflect the higher risk of incidents like ransomware attacks and data breaches, making it more challenging for businesses to budget for cyber coverage. To mitigate these rising costs, businesses should prioritize improving their overall security posture and plan investments accordingly.

Don’t cut too many corners here. Though cyber insurance can come with significant up-front costs, it’s now a critical safety net. In the event of a cybersecurity incident like a ransomware attack, cyber insurance can be all that stands between a business and crippling financial losses.

Define Key Performance Indicators

Defining key performance indicators (KPIs) is crucial for measuring the effectiveness of your cybersecurity investments. KPIs such as the number of threats detected, incident response time, and percentage of systems with up-to-date patches give you an accurate idea of how your cybersecurity program is performing. When you know what success looks like, you can determine whether your investments are delivering a return on investment (ROI).

• Accountability Matters: In today’s environment of growing inflation, high interest rates, tighter budgets, and increasing cybersecurity insurance premiums, companies are putting greater emphasis on risk-based budgeting. They’re spending where they can maximize impact. That’s why tracking these KPIs is so crucial.
• Make informed decisions: Creating accountability around your cybersecurity budget forces you to think more critically about the tools and services you’re investing in. Are your endpoint security solutions preventing attacks? Is your network monitoring catching anomalies before they escalate? By answering these questions through metrics like Mean Time to Detect (MTTD) and Mean Time to Respond (MTTR), you can make informed decisions on where to reallocate resources.

Build a Culture of Cybersecurity to Strengthen Your Investment

Cybersecurity isn’t just about technology; it’s about creating a culture of security across the organization.

Too often, organizations become so focused on technical defenses that they forget about the people factor. Your entire security stack is only as strong as the people using it. Thus, your investment in your workforce is one of the most important steps you can take to reinforce your cybersecurity spending.

A Verizon Data Breach Investigations Report (DBIR) revealed that 82% of breaches involved a human element, making employee training more critical than ever.

• Training and Awareness: Conduct regular training sessions to keep staff informed of the latest threats, such as phishing and social engineering attacks. Additionally, regular penetration testing and clearly defined policies can help employees better understand their roles in protecting the organization. For example, conducting phishing simulations can help staff recognize and avoid malicious emails before they cause harm.
• Fostering a Security-First Culture: By fostering a proactive, top-down security culture you can significantly improve your security posture. But fostering a strong cybersecurity culture goes beyond occasional training or seminars; it’s about creating a system where people are rewarded for identifying threats or weaknesses and feel safe reporting mistakes.

As technology advances and threats escalate, cybersecurity remains a top priority for businesses. By embracing a proactive and strategic approach to cybersecurity budgeting, you’ll be better equipped to navigate the challenges ahead.

Remember: Proactive Updates Are Critical
Patching and updating, like network documentation, isn’t at the top of most business leader’s “to-do” list, but it’s a critical part of keeping your technical debt at bay. While proactively keeping systems updated with the latest software patches and firmware, you can gather intelligence about incompatibilities or obsolete tools that could cause problems down the road.

Cybersecurity Budgeting Support for Support for Growing Business

The Astute Technology Management team of IT consultants has been helping businesses in Columbus and Cincinnati adopt the technologies they need to beat the competition for decades. If you’d like to make the most of your cybersecurity budget, contact us anytime at [email protected] or (614) 389-4102. We look forward to speaking with you!