Sound security budget planning and execution are essential for the CIO’s/CISO’s success. Now, for the first time, The Ultimate Security Budget Plan & Track Excel template (download here) provides 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 many CISOs encounter.
The Ultimate Security Budget Plan & Track template is an excel spreadsheet that comes pre-packaged with the required formulas to continuously measure, on a monthly basis, 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 been already consumed.
The Ultimate Security Budget Plan & Track Excel divides security spending into three buckets:
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)