How to Budget for Cybersecurity Costs

With cloud solutions on track to eventually replace traditional IT for most business functions—and cyberthreats increasing right alongside their use—every organization, regardless of size or industry, must budget for cybersecurity costs. However, doing so in today’s increasingly complex cloud storage environment is an intimidating and confusing task for many organizations. 

According to Forbes, data breaches cost an average of $4.88 million in 2024. That’s why it is imperative that organizations immediately invest in data security and backup and recovery solutions.  

Building a cyber resilience strategy can help you determine your overall cybersecurity costs. Cyber resilience is the practice of bringing together all of your security policies and procedures to ensure you can bounce back from incidents and outages. Cyber resilience combines cybersecurity tools, recovery and continuity plans, and collaborative teams to keep the business functioning regardless of disruptions. 

From assessing your cloud security needs to must-have cloud security tools, this article breaks down the budgeting process and explains what goes into a cost-effective strategy.  

The importance of cloud security in today’s digital landscape 

Cloud storage has become the backbone of computing power across most industries. Within the next couple of years, the cloud will be home to more than 100 zettabytes—a trillion gigabytes—of data, all of which will need to be captured, processed, stored, and used efficiently. Securing and protecting that data is essential for companies managing sensitive, personal information. 

Traditionally, companies invested significantly in on-premises storage solutions that took months to plan, procure, and deploy. They typically implemented more storage than needed so they would have space to scale into, deliberately overprovisioning for the highest possible peak demand. Additionally, teams of IT security staff were required to protect physical locations from potential theft or natural disasters. 

But now organizations are turning to advanced cloud storage solutions to implement data-driven operations like analytics, video surveillance, artificial intelligence/machine learning, and edge computing. About 90% of executives surveyed said their cloud storage budgets are increasing as they seek more flexible, streamlined options that can scale up and down as operations require.  

Companies are looking for cloud security options that let them store data in environments that minimize potential attacks while ensuring recoverability in the case of a breach. Worldwide, businesses are spending about 12 percent of their IT budgets on cybersecurity as more companies realize crucial needs. 

Still, cloud storage environments come with their own set of challenges, and the key elements driving budget increases include data security and backup and recovery. 

Assessing your cloud security needs 

Security requirements will vary based on what organizations are using their cloud storage for, but basic data protections apply across the board. Start with identifying sensitive data, compliance regulations, and evaluating your cloud security posture.

Identifying sensitive data and compliance requirements  

Sensitive and regulated data in the cloud needs stringent protection to foster trust and meet compliance regulations. According to the SANS cybersecurity institute, business records, employee data, health records, and customer data are most frequently stored in the cloud.  

When budgeting for cloud security costs, companies need to consider how their data storage complies with standards such as FERPA, HIPAA, CJIS, ISO/IEC 27001, PCI DSS, and SOC 2. These standards are mandated for doing business across industries such as education, healthcare, criminal justice, and financial services.  

Evaluating your cloud security posture 

Companies must evaluate their cloud security posture as part of compliance efforts. Risk management means assessing potential vulnerabilities in your security practices, identifying cloud misconfigurations, and analyzing compliance gaps. Robust risk analysis frameworks will also include strict, zero-tolerance user authorization processes and continuous compliance monitoring functions.  

Setting your cloud security budget 

The financial and reputational fallout from cyberattacks are well known. Roughly $17,000 is lost per minute due to cyberattacks. While many factors are at play—from the size and complexity of the organization to the type of data stolen—IBM reports that single data breaches worldwide average over $3 million and $8.64 million in the United States. Getting a budget in place to protect your organization against such catastrophic loss includes: 

• Knowing what’s on your network 

• Researching cloud storage models 

• Balancing costs with requirements 

• Allocating budget for incident response and recovery 

• Implementing regular security audits and adjustments 

Know your network  

Just knowing what’s running on the network is the first step to understanding cloud security cost factors. Companies today run hundreds of applications in the cloud. Some of those are tools licensed by the company for operations, but it also includes applications purchased outside of IT.  

Employees are engaging more and more with apps they have purchased, rather than using company-sanctioned tools. IT leaders cannot protect what they don’t know is on their network. 

And as edge computing increases and networks become more complex and dispersed, companies see a wider visibility gap between cloud operations and infrastructure. Closing that gap is important to monitoring performance, cybersecurity threats, and costs.  

Researching cloud storage models 

Many hyperscalers compete on advanced cloud storage offerings, but their pricing models are a complex mix of tiers and hidden egress fees and application programming interface (API) costs that make budgeting and forecasting difficult for customers. Look for data storage that won’t complicate budgets with unpredictable fees. 

Balancing cost with requirements  

Balance cloud security costs with what is needed before implementing cybersecurity tools: consider the use case being addressed, who will use the tools, how to integrate them into your infrastructure, and what outcome is expected. Common use cases for cloud security include: 

• Threat detection to connect all the dots of a possible attack 

• Vulnerability identification to determine how the network might be exploited 

• Intelligence management to collect and study all the information coming in that might impact the enterprise 

Robust cybersecurity policies will include access authorization, data encryption, compliance, risk assessments, incident response, continuity plans, employee training, and continuous monitoring.  

Allocating budget for incident response and recovery 

Of all cybersecurity preparation, planning for the unexpected might be the most important. In today’s network-driven age, any mission-critical downtime is unacceptable, whatever the cause. Think of what one wrongly pushed update can do to ground entire fleets of airplanes, resulting in days-long flight delays and rescheduling of thousands of passengers. 

IT downtime can cost more than $1,000 per minute. For high-priority applications, downtime can cost way more than that. Some executives have reported losing $1 million an hour during an outage. Allocate an incident response budget and put plans in place to offset potential losses.  

Incident response, disaster recovery, and business continuity plans provide the proper steps to mitigate outages and securely recover data from a potential breach. A business impact analysis can help you make informed decisions about the implications of various downtime scenarios and determine related financial costs, so your organization knows how to withstand the loss of cloud-based data or software. 

Implementing regular security audits and adjustments  

Conducting ongoing compliance activities ensures organizations are meeting legal requirements that data is protected properly, both when it’s in use or archived, no matter where it’s stored. Data such as digital information, electronic records, and personally identifiable information (PII) must not be deleted, corrupted, tampered with, or disclosed to unauthorized individuals. Ensure that everyone in the organization with access to sensitive information, from contractors and private entities to non-governmental representatives and cloud service providers, are bound to the same requirements.  

Cost-effective strategies include must-have tools 

Compliant cloud storage is only the first step toward data protection. Basic cybersecurity includes data encryption. Better, more stringent protection would go further and make the enterprise stronger. Companies taking the do-it-yourself approach to security need to understand all the layers involved and the essential solutions available. 

The best cloud storage tools combine several security measures to fortify data fortresses: 

• Zero-trust — In the zero-trust approach to cybersecurity, organizations are constantly authenticating network traffic and only granting access to data and applications to approved users. Anyone without the proper profile will be blocked.  

• MUA — Multi-user authentication builds in redundancy so that no one user can perform critical operations, such as deleting cloud storage. Multiple, authorized users will need to approve those actions. 

• MFA — Multi-factor authentication adds another layer of security to access data, such as requiring a code on top of a password to enter an account.  

• SSO — Single sign-on streamlines how access is controlled, minimizing the use of passwords that can be compromised. 

• Immutable backups — Creates an “air gap” using encryption and hashtags to lock data, ensuring thieves cannot alter or delete stored data. Immutable, object lock maintains the data chain of custody so organizations remain compliant and can restore information in the wake of a breach. 

Collaborate with cybersecurity experts 

You don’t have to do cloud security alone. Working with an expert cloud provider who already understands the cybersecurity challenges and threat landscape you face is a great strategy. Leverage their features through a shared responsibility model, a framework that defines the cybersecurity roles and responsibilities for both the cloud provider and its customer. With this plan in place, you will understand the specific cloud security actions you need to take, and those which your provider will perform. 

Finding the right partners can enhance security while streamlining cloud security costs. For example, Wasabi’s Technology Alliance Partners is an ecosystem of interoperable cloud application partners that help organizations elevate their data protection strategies. 

Safeguard your budget with Wasabi cyber resilience solutions 

Storing and protecting your data is more important than ever as big data use cases expand into all corners of business operations. And while data backed up in locked cloud storage helps you restore operations more quickly, the fees some providers charge you to access your own data might feel like a different kind of theft.  

Cyber resilience is built into the Wasabi cloud storage service. Wasabi integrates enterprise-level standards and tools for physical, data, and access security so your critical information is protected from ransomware attacks and is easy to recover. And Wasabi does not charge for egress or API calls, so you can safeguard your data protection from unexpected expenses. From small to large enterprises, Wasabi's cyber resilience solutions deliver the advanced security and robust data protection today’s big data demands.