The rise of expectations and the fall of the IT Manager’s budget
Buried amongst too many disparate projects, implementations, meetings, support cases, report writing, and, of course, security alerts, today’s IT Manager is over-familiar with having their capacity stretched and consequently, operating at a suboptimal level. In the same breath, Forbes very recently published an assessment of the pressure CISOs have faced since the pandemic took hold in 2020, highlighting how ‘IT leaders are now being asked to tackle more complex digitisation projects at a time when IT budgets are growing less quickly’. Tru dat.
Throw in the frustration of being perpetually misunderstood by pretty much all your string-holding-stakeholders, plus a growing list of rather mundane responsibilities, and anyone would be forgiven for throwing the towel in, or, dreaming of outer space.
So what is that nagging feeling that despite your difficult reality, there must be another dimension in which you could carry out your role comfortably and with more freedom?
Where them budgets at
In January, ComputerWeekly reported the latest Forrester research that also concludes IT budgets are under even more pressure – in fact IT spend is expected to fall by more than 3% in 2023. The promising news is (yes there is always a way of spinning it), ‘Forrester believes organisations will want to focus their technology spending on how they can best achieve cost savings and operational efficiency’.
Do we sense an eye roll there from IT Managers? Cutting budgets further is a good thing? At least we can give you good no bullshit news in that department as HighGround.io will generate the facts and the figures on all things Cyber Security to present to stakeholders in a way they can understand and give you the best chance of securing what budget is lurking around – to achieve exactly those two things cited; Cost savings and operational efficiency!
“But your boss thinks you’re already doing this, so how do you go about asking for budget to do what they think they’re already paying you to do?”
Grant the CTO at HighGround.io knows first-hand how this feels. Time to turn things on their head and show that your business case supports broader, commercial strategic planning to achieve long-term savings. – don’t make the mistake of positioning your request as little more than additional IT expenditure that no non-techie can begin to fathom (HighGround.io has a free plan btw).
Forbes Technology Council Member and author of the article mentioned earlier, Shane Buckley, lists ‘bringing ROI to the forefront when determining your cost savings strategy’ as one of the top five tactics CISOs should consider when budgeting amid economic uncertainty. Whether or not you report into or work alongside a CISO day-to-day, adopting an approach that supports this advice is unlikely to go amiss. And it’s when those real monetary savings based on NCSC values attributed to the cost of breaches and attacks – easily accessible via the HighGround.io dashboard – come in very handy.
Low investment, low risk
As if we needed a reminder, Buckley references that security postures are under more scrutiny than ever in light of survey results that revealed 80% of U.S.-based organisations were hacked in 2021, and 60% of those paid a ransom (argh). Of course, life would be a little simpler if today’s global economic environment could be summed up as ‘post-pandemic’, but not only are IT leaders finally revising the knee-jerk decisions made to accommodate the overnight switch to remote or hybrid working, they’re feeling the not-insignificant pinch as a result of war in Ukraine, widespread disruption impacting transportation and supply chain, plus global political instability.
Cue HighGround.io. To our point, Buckley points out ‘this might mean cutting back on spending and turning to one-stop solutions’. So let’s focus less on the associated cost of trialling a breakthrough platform, and more on the fact that something like HighGround.io is a major enabler when it comes to reducing existing IT and cyber security spend, shrinking the over-crowded landscape of digital solutions that the past couple of years left in their wake, and condensing your entire cyber security experience into one (easily personalised) dashboard where automation and easy to understand KPI’s like CyberScore and ROI ensure your FTE can steadily begin to focus on more valuable work.
The dimension
Pay close attention: is that the door to another dimension? Yes, the dimension where you can sign up for free to take control of your Cyber Security experience with HighGround.io Sign Me Up.
