Security Budget Calculator

The calculator computes two candidate budgets -- one as a percentage of Annual Revenue, one as a percentage of IT Budget -- and always uses the larger of the two. Increasing Annual Revenue only raises the recommended budget once the revenue-based benchmark exceeds the IT-budget-based one; below that crossover point, IT Budget alone still determines the result.

The fixed 10% Compliance share here is a generic, industry-agnostic split applied the same way regardless of your Industry selection, so it doesn't reflect that regulated sectors like healthcare or financial services often need materially more allocated to compliance, audits, and assessments than this illustrative breakdown assumes -- reweight the category split for your organization's actual regulatory obligations.

That gap comes entirely from the Risk Level multiplier: Critical applies 1.5x to both benchmark calculations while Low applies only 0.8x, and since that multiplier is applied before the calculator takes the larger of the revenue-based and IT-budget-based figures, two otherwise identical organizations differing only in self-assessed risk can see nearly a 2x spread in recommended budget from that single input.

The calculator does not take an actual employee count as input. Instead it infers an estimated headcount from the selected Company Size band (for example, roughly 250 employees for "Mid (100-500)") and divides the total Recommended Security Budget by that estimate, so Per Employee spend is only as precise as the size band selected.

Each Industry option carries its own pair of benchmark percentages reflecting real differences in regulatory burden and threat exposure: Retail uses 8% of IT budget and 0.4% of revenue, while Government uses 16% of IT budget and 0.7% of revenue. Selecting a different Industry changes both benchmark percentages simultaneously, which is why the recommended budget can shift substantially even with identical revenue and IT budget figures.