“We need to talk about next year's cybersecurity budget...”

Your heart sinks. Because you know what's coming. The same conversation we had with dozens of security managers last year: How can we reduce costs without opening the door to attackers??

It's like asking you to build a fortress with half the bricks you need. And honestly? We understand why management is asking these questions. Budgets are tight everywhere, and when you're staring at a five-figure bill for security tools every month, those numbers really do seem... big.

But here's what we've learned from companies that have mastered this very situation (and emerged stronger as a result): cutting security spending doesn't have to mean reducing security effectiveness.

The problem that most teams approach incorrectly

Last year, we worked with a medium-sized company that took a “clear-cutting” approach to its security budget. They cut their endpoint protection by 40%. They reduced their monitoring tools. They kept their security team at two people, even though they also perform administrative tasks on the side.

Six months later? They were battling a ransomware incident that cost them more in one week than their entire annual security budget.

The mistake they made (and, frankly, we see all the time) was to treat security spending as a simple math problem. Less money = less security = acceptable risk.

But security doesn't work in such a linear fashion. It's like... building a chain. You can have the strongest links in the world, but if you have one weak spot, the whole thing falls apart.

What really works: the 80/20 principle for security spending

After analyzing dozens of customer security budgets, we noticed something interesting. Most organizations spend about 60% of their budget on things that provide perhaps 20% of their actual protection.

Threat intelligence feeds that no one really uses? Specialized tools that overlap with three other systems? Compliance checkbox solutions that look good in board presentations but don't actually stop attacks?

Yes. That's usually where the savings potential lies.

This is how we typically help customers restructure their spending:

Start with the basics that really matter. Multi-factor authentication everywhere. Regular backups (which you actually test). Employee security training that is more interesting than watching paint dry. Patch management that doesn't rely on Klaus remembering to update the systems every few months.

It's not sexy. It doesn't make for impressive vendor demos. But it stops about 80% of the attacks we see in the wild.

Consolidate tools that do the same thing. We had a customer who was running three different monitoring solutions. Three! Each one captured slightly different things, but with massive overlaps. We helped them consolidate to a single complementary tool, saving them several thousand dollars a year while still maintaining visibility into the most important components.

Automate the tedious tasks. Look, we like administrators. But paying someone a six-figure salary a year to manually create accounts for employees? That's not a good deal. Put those smart people to work on the complex problems that actually require human judgment.

The real question: What can you actually afford to lose?

This is where the conversation with our customers becomes real.

Because cutting security spending isn't really about money. It's about risk tolerance. And honestly? Most leadership teams haven't really thought through what that means in practical terms.

We sit down with them and ask: What happens if your customer data is leaked? Or if your products can no longer be delivered? Not just the potential penalties. But customer trust. The competitive advantage you lose when you can't deliver. The weeks of all-hands-on-deck incident response that derails every other project.

Sometimes this conversation changes everything. Sometimes they realize that they actually cannot afford to cut security spending. They just need to spend more effectively.

Our “Good Enough” Framework

But sometimes budget cuts are real and non-negotiable. Sales have fallen. Growth forecasts have changed. The board has made a decision and that's that.

When that happens, we help customers build “good enough” security. Not perfect. Not enterprise-level everywhere. But thoughtfully designed to handle the most likely threats they will actually encounter.

Find out what you really protect. Not everything in your environment needs Fort Knox-level security. The test database with fake customer data? It probably doesn't need the same protection as your production payment processing system.

Know your threat landscape. Are you really worried about nation-state actors? Or is your greater risk disgruntled employees and opportunistic cybercriminals? Different threats require different defenses, and you can save a lot by being realistic about who is actually targeting you.

Build in layers, but build smart. You don't need seven different security tools. But you do need multiple ways to detect and respond when something goes wrong. Network monitoring. Endpoint protection. User behavior analytics. Choose the three things that give you the best coverage for your specific environment.

The key figures that really matter

Here's something that drives us crazy: companies that measure security success by how much they spend.

“We've increased our security budget by 30% this year!” Okay... so what? Are you actually more secure? Or have you just bought more expensive tools?

The key figures we track with customers are different:

• Time until actual security incidents are detected (not just alerts)
• How quickly you can contain problems and recover from them
• Percentage of your attack surface that is actually monitored
• Employee security awareness (measured by phishing simulation results, not by training completion rates)

Because at the end of the day, the best security program is the one that prevents incidents. Not the one with the biggest budget or the fanciest dashboard.

Make the case for what you really need

We understand. Sometimes you know exactly what you need, but convincing management is the hard part.

The key is to translate security risks into business language. Not “we need better endpoint detection and response capabilities,” but rather “without this investment, we face a 40% chance of a business-disrupting incident in the next 18 months, based on what we see at similar companies in our industry.”

Show them the math. The cost of prevention versus the cost of dealing with an incident. Consider not only the direct costs (incident response, regulatory penalties, system recovery), but also the indirect costs (lost productivity, customer churn, delayed product launches).

In most cases, when management sees the actual figures, they realize that cutting security spending is actually the more expensive option.

The conclusion (because someone always asks)

Can you optimize security spending while remaining resilient? Absolutely.

Will it require some difficult decisions and creative thinking? Definitely.

Should you panic and cut everything when budgets are tight? No. That will only result in you spending much more money to deal with the inevitable incident.

The companies we work with that handle this well all do the same thing: they are very clear about what they are protecting, who they are protecting it from, and what “good enough” looks like for their specific situation.

Then they build security programs that fit their budget, not the other way around.

And honestly? Sometimes these “good enough” programs are more effective than the gold-plated solutions they replaced. Because they are designed for reality, not for a perfect world where budget constraints don't exist.

If you are having this conversation in your company right now... you are not alone. And it is definitely solvable. Just don't try to solve it by pretending the threats aren't real.