Do you ever worry that your business isn’t fully protected from cyber threats? Is your IT budget not enough? We work with small business owners every day, and this is a common pain point that comes up again and again.

It’s an understandable position. After all, it’s hard to know how much you should be spending on tech and security. On one hand, you could be cutting corners that leave your business exposed, but if you err on the side of caution, you might be throwing money away on tools you don’t need.

Many business owners get a bitter dose of reality when they find themselves under attack. One local café owner we know skipped IT security updates to save money and then found herself losing three days – and thousands of dollars – in lost business, plus recovery expenses. As you can imagine, this cost several times what she would have spent on proper security.

Strategic IT Budget Planning

Here’s a general guideline for strategically planning your IT security budget.

Building Blocks (30% of your IT budget)

• Antivirus and firewall

• Secure backups

• Regular system updates and patches  

Critical Operations (40% of your IT budget)

• Cloud services and storage

• Network Infrastructure

• Applications critical to your business

Growth (20% of your IT budget)

• Employee training and security awareness

• Hardware upgrades

• Adopting new technology

Emergencies (10% of your IT budget)

• Emergency support

• Recovery efforts

• Planning incident response

Are you properly allocating your budget to cover all these bases?

Don’t be afraid to ask for help

Just think about how much time you’ve spent worrying about these matters when you could have been planning your business’s growth or enjoying time with loved ones.

No, you can’t just ignore this important component of business, but you can get help with it.

Working with a Managed Service Provider (MSP) is a bit like having your financial advisor on call for your investments in technology.

From setting a realistic budget to planning for future growth and ensuring compliance, you can sleep better knowing that experts are monitoring your systems.

Make better decisions  

Do you want to know if your current IT spending is on track? We’ve developed an End-of-Year Cybersecurity Health Check Guide to help you assess your tech investments. Not only is it free, but it could save you thousands of dollars or more in preventing security breaches.

Don’t start the new year by wondering if you’re making the right IT decisions. Download our guide today, and let’s talk about creating a winning IT budget.  

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