In today’s evolving economic climate, shifting revenue sources demand a focus on innovative revenue ideas and technologies that align with modern trends, particularly in IT and cybersecurity. According to the 2023 ISC2 Cybersecurity Workforce Study, 30% of respondents experienced cybersecurity budget cuts, and 32% experienced budget cuts in other areas of their organization. These budgetary constraints impacted security teams significantly:
- 53% experienced delays in purchasing/implementing technology
- 24% failed to renew cybersecurity software licenses
- 40% found the security team was restructured or moved within the organization
Increasingly, organizations face difficult IT budget challenges when managing security and service availability while working within these constraints.
Challenges When Managing IT Needs on a Budget.
With limited financial resources, IT leaders must navigate complex environments consisting of disparate technologies that make working with budgetary constraints more challenging. The need to balance cybersecurity measures with continuous innovation can strain existing resources and complicate decision-making processes.
Cybersecurity on a budget.
Fostering collaboration between IT and security teams means aligning business goals to security measures when allocating financial and staffing resources. When justifying their budget requests, IT and security leaders should work together to:
- Identify shared concerns
- Define roles and responsibilities
- Establish key performance metrics
Balancing cost and service availability.
Technology leaders strategically select projects that drive efficiency while being prepared to adapt swiftly to new conditions. However, many cybersecurity incidents, like Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), directly impact an organization’s ability to maintain business operations. As such, technology leaders often need to choose between business technologies that enable workforce productivity and ones that protect data and systems.
Limited time and resources.
Budget constraints trickle down to other areas of the IT department. For example, with a smaller budget, leaders lack the ability to hire enough staff or hire staff with the necessary experience. The ISC2 study noted that:
- 67% of respondents felt that their organization lacked the appropriate staffing to prevent and troubleshoot cybersecurity issues
- 34% of respondents said the organization didn’t have the budget
- 41% said the organization couldn’t find enough qualified talent
- 30% said that the organization didn’t pay a competitive wage
Benefits of managed services.
Managed services providers (MSPs) alleviate many staffing and technology burdens that budget constraints create. By working with a managed service provider, organizations gain the benefits of the skilled professionals and best-of-breed technologies with a predictable cost structure for budgeting purposes.
Cost reduction.
Outsourcing IT functions enables the organization to establish predictable operating expenses while reducing capital expenditures. Since the managed services provider spreads the capital investments across multiple customers, the buyers reduce costs associated with:
- Purchasing hardware and software
- Maintaining hardware and software
- Hiring and training staff
Expert staff.
To manage the cybersecurity skills gap, organizations can work with MSPs whose experienced staff offer a strategic advantage. For example, a DDoS attack can take down an organization’s business-enabling and customer-facing services, so protections need to be put in place. However, it may not need an entire team dedicated to mitigating DDoS risks.
Best-in-class technology.
When working with an MSP, organizations gain access to technologies that might otherwise be too expensive to buy or manage. When outsourcing with an MSP, organizations gain access to the best-of-breed technologies with hands-on support and expertise to manage them. For example, mitigating application and domain-based security threats might include any or all of the following technologies:
Compliance risk reduction.
With tailored solutions that help businesses navigate complex compliance landscapes, organizations can reduce the time and costs associated with compliance. Managing compliance becomes overwhelming as an organization scales. Between increasing IT environment complexity and new business objectives that implicate additional compliance mandates, organizations can find the compliance documentation and monitoring time-consuming. For example, an organization might find that as it adds new industry verticals to its customer base, it needs to comply with new regulations, standards, or frameworks like:
- Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)
- Center for Internet Security (CIS) Controls
- Cloud Security Alliance (CSA) Cloud Controls Matrix (CCM)
- National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework (CSF)
- International Organization for Standardization (ISO) 27001
Business continuity.
In a digital world, maintaining operations is critical to employee productivity and customer satisfaction. With the right security technology in place, organizations can reduce =IT and security costs related to incident handling and response, like mean time to detect (MTTD) and mean time to respond (MTTR). Whether the incident is a DDoS attack or query latency, resolving the issues as quickly as possible is critical to operational resilience and business continuity.
Bundled Services for Cloud-Based Security with Vercara UltraSecure.
With UltraSecure, small and mid-sized businesses get cost-effective, secure, and reliable DNS, managed DDoS protection, WAF, and recursive DNS security capabilities to match their enterprise competitors. Vercara’s award-winning services, along with a 24x7x365 security-based customer support team, augment IT and security staffing, ensuring the organization’s online presence is protected from malicious attacks.
UltraSecure combines four critical services for everything necessary to safeguard and ensure uninterrupted access to business assets. Our bullet-proof, managed, Authoritative DNS ensures accurate, safe, and reliable connections, while our game-changing protective DNS safeguards employees no matter where they are. Layered on top of these, our UltraDDoS protection is a turnkey, best-in-class DDoS protection for applications, regardless of attack size, length, or complexity. To improve web application security, our WAF with integrated bot management is a flexible, intelligent solution that mitigates risks arising from increasingly digital business operations. As the organization scales its business, UltraSecure can scale, offering add-on capabilities like upgrading WAF/DDoS protection bandwidth or other protective applications.
To learn how UltraSecure can help you achieve security and operational objectives while staying within your budgetary constraints, contact us today.
