Use This Ultimate Template to Plan and Monitor Your Cybersecurity Budgets

Sound security budget planning and execution are essential for
CIO’s/CISO’s success.

Now, for the first time, the Ultimate Security Budget Plan and
Track Excel template (download
here^[1]) provide security
executives a clear and intuitive tool to keep track of planned vs.
actual spend, ensuring that security needs are addressed while
maintaining the budgetary frame.

The dynamic nature of the threat landscape and the possibility
of the organization being subject to a critical attack, make an
unexpected investment in additional products, staff, or services a
highly likely scenario that should be considered. Integrating this
factor within the initial planning is a challenge for many CISOs
encounters.

The Ultimate Security Budget Plan & Track template is an excel
spreadsheet that comes pre-packaged with the required formulas to
continuously measure, every month, the planned and actual security
investments, providing immediate visibility into any mismatch
between the two.

In addition, for each month, there is a summary, displaying the
percentage of how much of the overall annual budget has already
been consumed.

The Ultimate Security Budget Plan & Track Excel divides security
spending into three buckets:

• Products – already deployed as well as planned projects
  for the coming year
• Staff – ongoing retainment of the security team,
  investments in their professional development, and security
  training to the organization’s workforce
• Services – any type of 3rd party services, from product
  deployment and management to IR and auditing.

Naturally, there is no one size fits all, and while the template is
pre-populated with common products, staff, and services categories
with examples, it is meant to be used as a starting point from
which each CISO can make modifications and adjustments based on
their organization’s unique needs.

In order to get started, the following steps are required:

1. Insert the annual cybersecurity budget in the dedicated
   cell
2. Go through the three spend sections and add the names of the
   products, staff, and services you use (feel free to modify these
   sections based on your needs)
3. Enter your planned spending for every month
4. At the end of every month, enter your actual spending. If it
   exceeds the planned one, the cell should become red.
5. At the end of each month, get clear visibility into your
   expected annual spent (actual spend so far + planned spent until
   the end of the year) vs. The annual allocated budget.

Download The Ultimate
Security Budget Plan and Track^[2]
here.