Lesson Summary

Many business leaders make suboptimal cybersecurity budget decisions due to a recurring pattern of fear, avoidance, and reactive behavior. Cybersecurity is often deprioritized until a security incident occurs, triggering panic-driven decisions under time pressure. Lacking proper assessment and internal understanding, organizations tend to overspend on consultants, tools, or services without a coherent strategy. This frequently leads to later budget cuts and long-term financial inefficiencies, with the negative impact persisting for years. A proactive, assessment-based strategy with clearly defined partners and aligned budgets enables organizations to control costs, reduce risk, and build sustainable cybersecurity readiness from the outset.

Transcript:

A lot of business leaders

make very bad budget

decisions when it's about

cybersecurity.

Here's what's happening all

the time and how you can be smarter.

For many business leaders,

their cybersecurity journey

starts actually with fear and

avoidance.

They know something might

happen to their company, but

they also put it so deep down

on a to-do list that this

project will never happen.

And then there's the point

where actually a fraud

attempt was successful or the

company has been part of a

hacking attack and that was

successful and very

expensive, or a client comes

around the corner and says,

guys, we're working together

for maybe 10, 15 years, but

now I need you to upgrade on

cybersecurity on another level.

And that's the point where

panic kicks in.

And when panic kicks in,

those leaders are very, very

likely to completely

overspend on cybersecurity

because they didn't do an

assessment in the beginning.

There was no time for it

anymore.

They didn't ask the wild

questions because they had no

time to upgrade their

knowledge level as well.

So they can't even ask their

service providers or software

companies they're working

together with

what level are you at?

Can you help us with our

cybersecurity strategy?

But they just spend on

whatever might help.

If it's consultants, if it's

new software, if it's the IT

service provider that's

actually totally too much for

this small or medium company.

So we're losing a lot of

money in the game.

And then

There's the point where they

see, that was too much and

actually we can't even

integrate all these external

helpers in our own work

processes, so we have to cut

the budget again.

So what they do is from

avoiding the topic to

panicking, overspending,

cutting back, it takes them years.

to come back to a strategic

approach, the right budget,

the right people, the right

partners they want to work with.

And this can be very, very

harmful, especially if your

cybersecurity journey and the

point where you actually

invest and work on the topic

was a hacker attack and it

was successful and you're

also discussing with your

cyber insurance if they pay

or if they don't pay, but

also might take years.

So what you want to do is you

want to have your assessment

and you want to have your

strategy 1st and then find

the right partners so that

you can also set the right

budget that fits for your

company, for your industry,

for your growth goals and not

anything that's either

avoiding or overspending

because these are the points

where you lose money one way

or the other.