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Year-end approaches: How to maximize your cyber spend. December budget conversations follow a predictable pattern. You have unspent funds, a list of security gaps, and pressure to show progress before the fiscal year closes. The question isn't whether to spend; it's how to spend in ways that reduce real risk and build momentum for next year's requests. Skip the vendor wish lists and conference-circuit buzzwords. Instead, focus your remaining budget on investments that deliver measurable security improvements and create defensible audit trails for future funding discussions. Identify which security gaps create the highest business risks Start with exposures that directly threaten your operations, customer data, or regulatory compliance. A vulnerability in your customer-facing authentication system outweighs a theoretical attack chain that requires three separate compromises to exploit. Then, map potential incidents to business consequences. Finally, rank your security gaps by the impact they create, not the fear they generate. Severity scores and threat intelligence reports provide context, but your finance and legal teams understand business risk better than CVSS ratings. And they're the ones you need to convince anyway. Secure your Active Directory passwords with Specops Password Policy Verizon’s Data Breach Investigation Report found stolen credentials are involved in 44.7% of breaches.    Effortlessly secure Active Directory with compliant password policies, blocking 4+ billion compromised passwords, boosting security, and slashing support hassles! Strengthen identity controls to achieve the fastest risk reduction Weak credentials and excessive access rights create the openings that attackers exploit most frequently. But the good news is that identity-focused controls can help you significantly reduce your risks within weeks. To reap the rewards of identity-first investments, focus on: Prioritize outcome-driven security engagements over unused tools Year-end budget pressure tempts teams to purchase platforms they won't configure until Q2. Resist that trap. Instead, buy engagements that produce actionable results. Outcome-based engagements worth considering These kinds of engagements cost less than most software licenses and generate documentation that strengthens next year's budget requests. Reduce vendor overlap to cut costs and complexity Most organizations run overlapping security tools that duplicate functionality without improving coverage. Consolidating your stack reduces complexity, improves user experience, and cuts help desk tickets, all while redirecting savings toward identity controls, incident response capacity, or security automation. Start by auditing your current stack for redundant tools such as: Each overlap represents wasted licensing and administrative overhead, as well as alert fatigue when three different tools flag the same issue. Once you've identified the overlap, use year-end timing to your advantage. Many vendors offer discounts to close quarterly targets, so consider renegotiating support contracts and threatening non-renewal for underutilized products.  Low-friction continuity controls prevent downtime during critical periods Some security investments deliver value by preventing catastrophic failures during critical windows. These purchases cost relatively little but provide substantial insurance against downtime. Start with incident response retainers. Nobody wants to haggle about hourly rates while their infrastructure burns. By pre-negotiating agreements with forensics and recovery specialists, you can eliminate procurement delays and lock in rates before emergencies triple standard pricing.  Then, boost your infrastructure’s resilience by provisioning cloud and CDN surge capacity. DDoS attacks and traffic spikes can threaten availability during high-revenue periods, but pre-configured scaling rules and reserved capacity ensure you can absorb attacks without manual intervention. Don't forget authentication capacity planning. Purchase emergency licensing for MFA or privileged access management systems now so you can rapidly deploy additional capacity during infrastructure changes or security incidents. Validate your capacity assumptions by scheduling performance testing before peak periods, preventing revenue-impacting outages before they happen. Use documentation to strengthen next year’s budget position You must be able to justify your year-end spending, and a little documentation now can simplify next year’s budget process exponentially.  Spend year-end budget strategically; not reactively Year-end budget pressure creates the temptation to spend quickly rather than wisely. To get the most out of your budget any time of year, prioritize investments that reduce identity-related risk, deliver actionable outcomes, and build documentation for future requests. Vendors aren't going anywhere; invest in security that actually reduces risk instead of checking boxes. Need more support? Speak to a Specops expert. Sponsored and written by Specops Software.