Security Compliance Costs- 5 Questions to Ask Before Spending

Is Security Compliance Cost Out of Your Reach?

Over the years, assessing security levels and demonstrating security compliance hasn’t been a core focus for many small to mid-size service companies’. Yes, information security has always been important, but in the last few years, customers have begun to require companies to elevate their security posture and to attest to security compliance as a requirement to continue doing business. So now companies must weigh the security compliance costs against the potential loss of business from customers and other partners requiring compliance with their security regulations.

Naturally, this is leading many companies to invest in security compliance solutions that are designed to help them comply with these new requirements. There’s just one big issue with making those investments: Security isn’t a one-size-fits-all problem. As a result, deciding which solution is right for your business isn’t always easy and choosing the wrong solution — either in purpose or size — can be costly.

Security Compliance Cost: How Much Should You Spend?

In a perfect world, the ideal security solution would be the one that aligns with your business, your data, and your industry. This “ideal” solution should enable you to meet the intent of security regulations, which means it needs to be right-sized to your budget and company size. Unfortunately, security regulations don’t tell you exactly what this solution is. Instead, they tell you what problems to solve, which leaves you to blindly decide what “right-sized” means.

So, how can you ensure that you don’t spend too much or too little on a security compliance solution?

This is where working with an experienced third-party security expert can be incredibly helpful. These organizations have the expertise to help you independently assess your security posture and determine where gaps exist relative to the targeted regulations. Once you have that information, it’s much easier to choose and implement the right solution, and conduct ongoing monitoring and management.

5 Questions to Ask When Determining the Correct Security Compliance Cost Profile

Beyond working with a third-party expert to help you choose the right solution, there are several questions you’ll want to ask as you evaluate your options:

1. Is the solution (even the Risk Assessment) right-sized for your business?
2. Are there bundled solutions that will provide similar security coverage at a lower price?
3. Can you replace individual solutions or costly on-premise solutions with bundled, cloud-based, or hosted security solutions to save money?
4. Are you better off outsourcing and using a managed security solution instead of hiring, and constantly training so that you can managed each solution you buy? (Tip: This is one of the best ways to save money and achieve optimal security configurations, monitoring, and maintenance. Complex security like firewalls, SIEM security monitoring, 2-factor authentication, and data protection are often better to outsource.)
5. Can you save money by choosing monthly subscription services that reduce initial cash outlay, or convert the expense to OpEx instead of CapEx?

Those five questions should provide a solid framework for helping you decide which compliance level security solution is right for your business.

And if you need more help, we work with companies all the time to solve this equation. We’re especially sensitive to the problem of ramping up security to meet compliance regulations on a limited budget. Want to learn more? Reach out to our team to discuss how we can help you manage your security compliance costs with the right solutions for your business.

Link to previous article on Compliance Level Solutions