Building Your 2025 IT & Security Budget

Inflation is easing, but technology costs are still rising. Gartner forecasts worldwide IT spending will hit $5.2 trillion in 2025, a 6.8% jump driven by security, cloud, and AI investments. Businesses across Texas feel that pressure while also navigating aging infrastructure, stricter compliance mandates, and cyber insurers demanding proof of controls.

The answer is not “spend more.” It is building a security-first budget that aligns dollars with measurable outcomes—resilience, productivity, and growth. This guide combines industry benchmarks from Gartner and IDC, cost-of-breach data from IBM, and real-world lessons from Texas clients to help you build a 2025 budget stakeholders can approve with confidence.

What Are Other Texas Businesses Spending?

Start with percentages. Gartner’s forecast shows professional services allocating 6–8% of revenue to IT, healthcare 4–7%, manufacturing 3–5%, and retail 2–4%. IDC’s regional research aligns closely for midmarket firms.

Size matters: organizations under 200 employees often spend a higher percentage because they lack economies of scale, while larger enterprises can centralize costs. Security typically accounts for 10–15% of total IT spend, but highly regulated sectors trend closer to 20%.

Treat these as baselines, not limits. If your current spend falls below peers, be prepared to explain how you’re still meeting resilience and compliance requirements.

Building From a Security Foundation

Security must be built in, not bolted on. Allocate budget across three pillars:

• Prevention: MFA, identity governance, patching, backup hardening, and zero-trust network segmentation.
• Detection: 24/7 monitoring, SIEM/XDR subscriptions, threat intelligence, and log retention.
• Response: Incident response retainers, tabletop exercises, cyber insurance deductibles, and post-incident improvements.

Balance spend so none of the pillars are underfunded. Overinvesting in prevention without detection leaves you blind when something slips through; ignoring response planning turns minor events into multi-week outages.

Essential Spending Categories Beyond Security

Use these ranges to sanity-check allocations:

• Infrastructure (30–35%): servers, networking, storage, connectivity, end-user devices.
• Support & management (25–30%): service desk, lifecycle management, documentation, onsite support.
• Software & licensing (20–25%): productivity suites, SaaS, ERP/EMR, collaboration tools.
• Security (15–20%): controls mentioned above plus GRC tooling.
• Strategic projects (10–15%): cloud migrations, AI pilots, modernization initiatives.

Adjust for your reality. For example, manufacturers investing in OT modernization may push infrastructure higher, while professional services firms embracing SaaS may shift dollars to software and strategic projects.

Hidden Costs to Account For

Budgets fail when surprise expenses pop up midyear. Plan for end-of-life hardware, software renewals, compliance upgrades, and cloud storage growth. Flexera’s 2024 State of the Cloud Report shows 30% of cloud spend is wasted on unused resources—build optimization initiatives into your budget to reclaim dollars.

Set aside funds for cyber insurance premium increases and policy requirements. Marsh’s global insurance market index notes double-digit premium hikes for companies lacking documented controls.

ROI and Business Case Development

Executives approve budgets that connect investment to outcomes. Quantify downtime costs, compliance penalties, and productivity gains using real numbers.

The IBM 2024 Cost of a Data Breach Report shows organizations with tested incident response programs saved $2.33 million per breach. Use that delta to justify investments in tabletop exercises, SOC coverage, and backup modernization.

Leverage our downtime cost calculator to model revenue loss per hour of outage. Present two scenarios—status quo versus proposed investment—and highlight the payback period.

Need help communicating the plan? Our strategic IT leadership team builds board-ready decks with KPIs executives understand.

Maximizing Value When Money Is Tight

If budgets are constrained, prioritize high-risk, high-impact initiatives. Address technical debt incrementally—retire unsupported operating systems, replace single points of failure, and consolidate overlapping tools.

Managed services can turn unpredictable costs into a fixed investment. Rather than juggling vendors for support, security, and compliance, partner with a provider whose all-inclusive model covers them without change orders.

Scrutinize cloud spend. Flexera notes rightsizing, reserved instances, and license optimization deliver quick savings. Implement tagging policies and monthly cost reviews to prevent sprawl.

The True Cost of Piecemeal IT Services

Sticker shock from all-inclusive services often comes from comparing them to a stripped-down managed services tier. Once you add separate SOC subscriptions, compliance consulting, emergency onsite rates, and project management, piecemeal support usually costs more—and leaves gaps.

A 40-user business might pay $6,000 per month for “basic” managed services, then another $1,500 for security tools, $1,200 for compliance help, $1,000 for project management retainers, and unpredictable onsite fees. The monthly total rivals an all-inclusive partnership without the guaranteed response times or accountability.

If you maintain an internal IT team, run the same math. What does it cost to staff 24/7 on-call rotations, fund continuous training labs, and keep documentation current? Use that analysis to decide whether to augment or outsource.

Your 2025 Budget Planning Checklist

1. Review 2024 spend and categorize by infrastructure, support, software, security, and projects.
2. Collect business goals and growth targets from leadership.
3. Update risk assessments and compliance requirements.
4. Gather benchmark data (Gartner, IDC) and compare against peers.
5. Model downtime and breach costs using real revenue numbers.
6. Prioritize initiatives by risk reduction and business impact.
7. Align investments with prevention, detection, and response pillars.
8. Plan cloud optimization and technical debt remediation.
9. Create a quarterly review cadence with KPIs and budget checkpoints.
10. Document assumptions, owners, and contingency allocations for unexpected needs.

What’s Different About 2025 Planning

Generative AI initiatives are moving from pilot to production. Budget for licensing (Microsoft Copilot, Google Duet) and the security implications—data governance, model access, and monitoring.

Cloud optimization is no longer optional. Flexera’s report shows 62% of organizations plan to increase FinOps investment. Build internal capabilities or partner with specialists to reduce waste.

Cyber insurance applications now demand proof of MFA, EDR, and incident response plans. Allocate funds for audits, policy updates, and tooling that satisfies underwriters.

Remote and hybrid workforces need ongoing investment in secure collaboration, endpoint management, and culture-building to retain talent while protecting data.

Conclusion

An effective 2025 IT budget blends security, operational excellence, and strategic innovation—all while staying transparent. Benchmarks, ROI math, and quarterly reviews keep the plan grounded in reality.

If you want a partner to build, present, and execute the plan, our all-inclusive model covers managed IT, security, and strategic leadership with one predictable investment. We’ll validate your numbers, brief your board, and own the roadmap without surprise bills.

Ready to build a budget your executives will approve? Book a budgeting strategy session or call 214-919-5065. We’ll turn your priorities into a funded, measurable plan.