How Neglecting These Cybersecurity Factors can Hurt an Enterprise’s Budget

The pandemic has brought havoc on enterprises, and sustaining along with protecting their businesses’ technological infrastructure has become critical. Without prioritizing the necessary cybersecurity factors, enterprises have much more to lose than gain.

Enterprises across all industries have been forced to rush their digital transformation journey as the world went into lockdown. Even though the effects of COVID-19 are receding, it will have a long-lasting impact on the economies. Hence, it is vital for enterprises to optimize their budget, especially the cybersecurity one, which cost is increasing at an exponential rate.

Preventing an attack that could infiltrate the enterprise’s technological infrastructure is always less expensive than to repair the ones that occur. Still, enterprises fail to address this issue because of their inability to prioritize and invest in essential cybersecurity factors.

As the attacks are evolving, increasing the cybersecurity budget is not the best answer. Enterprises must assess all the necessary cybersecurity items before and optimize their cybersecurity budget that is rational and delivers a higher RoI.

Following are a few cybersecurity factors that enterprises should consider, to stop the adverse effects of bad investments in cybersecurity:

● A proficient staff

Many enterprises are continuing to underestimate the cost of hiring and retaining skilled cybersecurity professionals. Hiring professionals to save money is a bad idea for enterprises looking to protect their IT security budget. The recent gap in qualified cybersecurity professionals and the growth in the number of jobs is increasing exponentially.

Read More: COVID-19 exposing the Cybersecurity Vulnerabilities of Enterprises

Hiring a skilled cybersecurity professional is a challenge still faced by enterprises to this day. Therefore, if an enterprise succeeds in hiring a skilled individual, it is essential to take necessary measures to hire and retain them.

● Cloud Expenditure

As the cybersecurity landscape of cloud computing is changing rapidly, many enterprises still struggle to manage their cybersecurity budget. In most enterprises, cloud expenditure isn’t centralized. Many departments within the enterprise conduct testing or development in cloud environments without having proper controls in place. This continually changing scenario can make the enterprise’s cybersecurity vulnerable to cyber-attacks.

Before investing in the cloud, enterprises should reflect upon the pricing by analyzing the individual department’s trailing and testing cloud-based security tools

● Taking third-party’s advice

Having in-house cybersecurity is essential to protect the enterprise’s infrastructure. But on its own, the team may fail to consider the launch of the latest attacks on other enterprises.

Read More: Dell Study – Cyber-attacks and Disruptive Events Spike amid COVID-19

Thus, designating a budget for third-party vulnerability testing and consultants that can provide recommendations to the enterprise’s cybersecurity team about the potential cyber threats can go a long way in strengthening the cybersecurity of the enterprise. This extra expenditure on third-party advice can help enterprises to optimize their cybersecurity investments.

● Incident Response

Enterprises often overlooked the incident response (IR) role, especially when it comes to budget. Enterprises that have faced the implications of data breach can develop IR strategies that can help them to mitigate the potential financial losses. Hiring the right people and training a group within an enterprise, who will be responsible for incident response, can pay in the long run.