- From Chaos to Clarity: Cybersecurity Leadership Lessons - November 13, 2025
- Hopepunk in Cybersecurity: Radical Humanity Meets Creative Defense - September 10, 2025
- The Enterprise AI Balancing Act: Innovation vs. Security - May 15, 2025
October ushers in pumpkin spice lattes, flannel shirts, and, for many, the start of the budget prep season and our dearly beloved Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2024.
As you sift through emails from vendors across the security spectrum, I encourage you to consider the month’s offerings differently. Especially as we’re wrapping up the year, now’s the time to consider your cybersecurity program from a strategic point of view.
Here’s what I recommend.
#1. Leading with a Cybersecurity Program Perspective
I’m a massive supporter of constantly working toward a holistic cyber program. What does that mean exactly? In general, it’s taking the time to understand your environment (connections, data, tools, assets), requirements (policies, regulations, business drivers), and capabilities (people, third parties, budgets) to strategize and implement — with purpose — the layers of security.
This strategy allows teams to investigate complementary tools across business units, the potential landscape of governing and legislative actions that could impact the organization and seek ways to justify additional requests for the budget to support security and growth.
With a program-focused mindset, practitioners and leaders can work together to assess the whole first, then move into the details of the parts and see where gaps can exist. This approach is more than evaluating a vendor when a contract expires, scrambling to collect data before an audit, or creating a status update before someone addresses the board.
The good news is that this doesn’t have to be a months-long process or a “time suck” succession of fractured team meetings. Purposefully shaping a program for the current and future state is achievable, and guidance exists to support your efforts.
Use Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2024 and budget planning for next year to bring this approach to your organization.
#2. Don’t Be Blinded by the Shine
There are a lot of shiny, interesting, fun tools and services out there, but how do you best know what you need and if that’s the right thing for you? (This is especially important during Cybersecurity Awareness month when there’s extra hype about security products.)
Analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester should be considered, as do community spaces where you can view how others rate their experiences.
Understanding your program and gaps is vital, but so is digging deeper into the product or service and not being afraid to ask some hard questions, such as:
- What are your current vendors, tools, or services doing for you today? Are they doing that well? Are parts of these services not enabled or configured well? Why buy a new tool if you can optimize what you already have? You can use that budget to increase another layer of security.
- What are your team’s capabilities, and is there room for their growth in security? If you are short-staffed or your current team is already overwhelmed, can you look into consultants, staff augmentation, or managed services to allow your team to perform even better if they can offload some other tasks?
- Looking holistically at your program, where can tools or tasks be consolidated? As vendors continue to develop and grow their offerings, are you learning about these changes and how they can help make your approach more resource-efficient and effective?
#3. Strategize Your Budget: Think Ahead and Collaborate
Cybersecurity products and services are typically costly. When assessing your needs, such as replacing existing tools/services, filling a gap in your chosen framework, or fulfilling a known requirement, working within your existing team’s budgets may not be ideal.
What are some ways to overcome this using your program strategy?
Consider the following:
- Do other teams have complementary program needs or initiatives? Collaborating with different teams in your company, such as IT, HR, and even Legal/GRC, shows leadership with ‘the ranks’ and can help secure additional budgets when you can positively impact multiple business units.
- Planning can help you have time to look for your ideal solution and even time to respond when discounts are available. Starting to look for a new vendor only a month or two before your existing contract ends can drive the need to sign a contract quickly, which may not be the best solution.
- Not tracking your security program against any frameworks yet? Showing your executives or Board how your program stacks up against popular cyber frameworks can help pinpoint gaps. Seeing these gaps and their potential for blind spots or vulnerabilities in your organization could help them understand how impactful that new tool, service, or 3rd party can be. Executives are quicker to understand the need for investment in meeting regulations or other legal requirements, but sometimes less so when looking at other proactive approaches.
Cybersecurity Awareness Month 2024: Get Started Now with Bridgepointe
One of the aspects of our Security Practice at Bridgepointe that I enjoy the most is sharing these mindsets and guidance with our customers and connecting them to consultants or vendors who can help them.
Not all products or solutions are created for all types of customers, verticals, or needs. We work closely with our customers to understand their current and future state, their tolerance for different services or support, and the speed bump of budget constraints.
Get started now with a complimentary cybersecurity audit from our in-house experts. Book your audit below.
