LIVE from Gartner: Presenting Cybersecurity Budgets CFOs Can Get Behind
LIVE from Gartner: Presenting Cybersecurity Budgets CFOs Can Get Behind
Publish Date: 2026-06-01 13:17:00
Source Domain: nationalcioreview.com
Cybersecurity leaders spend months building annual budgets, only to watch the assumptions behind them change before the year is halfway over.
That was a central theme in a Gartner Security & Risk Management Summit session led by Elizabeth Davis. Drawing on her background in finance and cybersecurity, Davis challenged the idea that security budgets should be treated as fixed plans. Threats change, business priorities shift, acquisitions happen, new products launch, and regulatory requirements emerge. Yet many organizations still expect security teams to operate against a budget built for a different set of conditions.
Rather than trying to predict every future requirement, Davis encouraged security leaders to focus on creating more flexibility in how budgets are discussed, justified, and adjusted throughout the year.
Start With Business Priorities
One of Davis’s most practical observations was that many security budgets are built around technologies and controls while executive teams are focused on business outcomes.
Security leaders know why identity modernization, endpoint protection, and detection tools matter. The challenge is helping non-security stakeholders understand why those investments matter to the business.
A request for additional IAM funding may be technically sound, but a CFO is more likely to respond to a discussion about customer access, digital growth initiatives, or reducing friction in online transactions.
The technology remains the same. The framing changes.
“Executives don’t fund controls. They fund outcomes.“
Elizabeth Davis
According to Davis, only about 40% of security leaders intentionally align budget discussions to business objectives. That creates a gap between what security teams are trying to accomplish and what executive stakeholders believe they are funding.
Build Scenarios Before Budget Season Gets Difficult
Davis repeatedly returned to the value of scenario…
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