How much does good cybersecurity defences cost?
What should my business budget for cybersecurity?
Is it worth the expense?
What would be a typical cybersecurity set-up for a small or medium sized business and how much would it cost per month or year?
These are questions we hear all of the time. In an ideal world, every business would have an unlimited budget to protect themselves against the worst case scenario - a cybersecurity breach costing the loss of their business. This is, of course, unrealistic.
We have compiled the cost of basic, but essential, cybersecurity measures. Our recommendations are based upon 15 years experience in finding the most cost effective and secure set-up for our SME client base.
The costs are projected for a company that has 15 computer users, listing the recommended cybersecurity defences, together with the cybersecurity costs.
We would would recommend the following cybersecurity defences for businesses of all sizes as a basic level:
A WatchGuard T30 firewall with three years of subscriptions has an RRP of £1,494. With professional installation and configuration, you’ll be looking at closer to the £2,000 mark. When calculated to a monthly per user cost, it costs:
£3.70 per user, per month
or £44.44 per computer, per year
or £667 for all 15 computers, per year, over a three year subscription
There are lots of ways to buy malware protection, which includes anti-virus software. At Superfast, we deploy an integrated suite of security software to our clients’ machines, including Webroot, Malwarebytes, and Cisco Umbrella. Combined with patch management, this comes to:
£2.95 per computer, per month
or £35.40 per computer, per year
or £531 for all 15 computers, per year
Email security and email filtering will keep sensitive information in email communication and accounts secure. The email security we provide to clients prevents unauthorised access, losses or compromises, as attackers often use emails as an entry point to gain access to business network and obtain valuable company data. This type of protection costs:
£2.50 per month, per email user
or £30.00 per email, per year
or £450 for all 15 computers, per year
The above-recommended defences; firewall, malware, antivirus and email security works out to:
£9.15 per user per month
or £109.80 per user, per year
or £1,647.00 for all 15 computers, per year
This will providing all-round protection against a variety of threats.
Effective cybersecurity stems from having your technology configured in a secure way at the time of installation. The difference between having a system deployed by a professional and an amateur is often the level of security inherent in the system.
If you don’t have a secure configuration from the outset, the defences mentioned above will be limited in their effectiveness. It might save you money in the short-term by trying to configure technology yourself, but this approach will likely leave you exposed.
As the last line of defence, you’ll also want to make sure that you have a robust disaster recovery solution in place, which will allow you to get back up and running quickly while minimising data loss in the event of a security breach.
As you can see, it’s possible to get good cyber-security defences in place without breaking the bank. When you compare the cost to that of a security breach, you can see it makes sense to have basic security controls in place.
There are a number of other measures a business should take in order to have multi-layered cyber security protection.