Developing your 2024 security budget? Here are some best practices.

Set your priorities, then match technology to risk.

I can’t think of a single security executive or integrator who enjoys the budgeting process. Knowing what to prioritize is a challenge, and getting to that answer means gathering a wide range of perspectives from across the organization. Here are some guidelines that may help you set the stage.

Understanding risks and focusing on needs

Making a security budget has always been about understanding the risks an organization faces and what’s needed to mitigate them to an acceptable level cost-effectively. The last few years have shown us that it’s increasingly difficult to predict what the risks will be and how to fight them. Factoring in flexibility; specifically, the ease of expanding or adapting a system, is important. Investing in technology that is open and portable rather than relying on proprietary systems helps you avoid paying for something just because it’s too expensive to abandon. 

Technology changes constantly. Previous generations of video surveillance and access control are giving way to smart sensors with AI-based analytics and other ways to protect and secure, increase productivity, inform the business, and reduce human effort. There are so many different ways to do things, it can be overwhelming. No single technology can solve every problem. Integrators and organizations need to take time to research so they’re able to understand not only how new technologies work, but how they interact with people and processes before deciding to deploy them. What looks good on paper may not work for your specific challenges, or your internal operations.

Getting C-level buy in

As it’s not a revenue-generating function, security is typically budgeted from what remains after other efforts are funded. The biggest challenge in developing a security budget is justifying the overhead of protecting the mission. We all know how to place value on a loss the business has suffered, but it’s impossible to place a value on a system that prevents an event from ever happening.

The growing use of analytics and metrics from data captured by security systems can be invaluable to organizations in other ways and may help change its perceived value. Otherwise, when budgeting for security, organizations may have to accept more risk than they would like and hope that nothing happens. The major challenge is in finding the right balance of budget going to the primary mission and making sure what’s left over for security addresses the identified risks at an acceptable level.

Best practices

Whether you’re an integrator or in-house security professional, your own best practices should stem from what you’re trying to achieve. Before you look at any technology, understand what risk it mitigates, the organization’s tolerance for that risk, and what the impact of the loss would be. From our long history working with integrators and organizations worldwide, we’ve seen these steps become best practices:

1.       Develop a plan consistent with the organizational structure.

2.       Deploy only technologies that fit with the organizational workflow.

3.       Make sure the cost of the security solution is proportional to the asset you’re protecting.

4.       When recommending technologies, develop specifications that state not only what solutions do and how they are designed, but how they will be used to reduce identified risks or solve identified problems, and what the expectations are.

Finally, if / when you’re in the throes of budget planning, don’t hesitate to reach out to your partners and suppliers to help. They know your infrastructure and your organization, and can help you prioritize, add their knowledge of risk and technology advancements to yours, and help you optimize costs and meet your organization’s needs. Don’t go it alone. We can help!

i-PRO offers FlexPay Financing -- deferred payments, step or flex payments, and multi-vendor bundling to help organizations stay current with security technology. This informational page includes getting-started guidance for procurement officers.