Making the Maximum Business Impact With CRQ: Reflections on Forrester’s Budget Planning Guide 2025

While Forrester 's Budget Planning Guide for 2025 reports that the vast majority of cybersecurity decision-makers expect their budgets to grow in the upcoming year, the reality is that 46% of them only anticipate a 1-4% bump.

3% of them expect a reduction.

These findings are not entirely shocking; they align with what we've heard throughout the industry over the past couple of years. Budgets simply aren't keeping pace with the cyber risks organizations are facing.

That said, Forrester does offer the key to limited resource optimation: Above all, cybersecurity investments must be viewed as business decisions.

Budget optimization and consequently ensuring that resources are making the greatest impacts depend on this alignment, which means recognizing that the best choice for cyber defenses may not be the best for business growth.

And that's okay. Cyber risk management exists to support the organization and achieve its mission, not the other way around.

But to adopt this business-first mindset, CISOs need to rethink the way they've traditionally approached cybersecurity - a task for which on-demand cyber risk quantification proves essential.

CRQ's value (in this instance) is two-fold. First, as Forrester aptly states, it contextualizes "data about assets, vulnerabilities, threats, and losses," offering a clear picture of those cyber risks most likely to cause significant damage to business operations.

Leveraging this contextualization, CISOs can more confidently allocate resources, investing in those initiatives that minimize these losses to the greatest extent and likewise choosing those projects that yield a positive ROI (a benefit hardly any business leader has ever objected to).

Second, CRQ communicates the value that proactive cyber risk management brings in tangible terms, giving stakeholders the clarity necessary for recognizing cyber's contribution to long-term success.

The financially quantified insights are not merely about justifying spending; they are about demonstrating that cybersecurity investments are driving the organization forward in a language that everyone understands.

With limited resources, every investment must count, and by adopting CRQ, CISOs can ensure that in 2025 and beyond, budgets make the maximum business impact.

How are you planning on optimizing your cybersecurity budget in the years to come??

-----

Read the full report here: https://www.forrester.com/bold/planning-guide-2025-security-risk/?

#CRQ #riskmanagement #cyberriskmanagement #businessenablement #cyberresilience #cyberriskquantification