Cybersecurity Business Plan (CBP) Template
Product Walkthrough Video
This short product walkthrough video is designed to give a brief overview about what the CBP is to help answer common questions we receive.
What Is The Cybersecurity Business Plan (CBP)?
The Cybersecurity Business Plan (CBP) is a business plan template that is specifically tailored for a cybersecurity department, which is designed to support an organization's broader technology and business strategies. The CBP is entirely focused at the CISO-level, since it is a department-level planning document.
Our products are one-time purchases with no software to install - you are buying Microsoft Office-based documentation templates that you can edit for your specific needs. If you can use Microsoft Office or OpenOffice, you can use this product! The CBP contains a template and guidance to develop organization-specific mission, vision, strategy, objectives, etc. in an editable Microsoft Word format. The following content is what you will have in the CBP with examples that you can easily modify for your specific needs:
- Organizational description
- Vision
- Mission
- Strategy
- SWOT analysis
- Definition of success
- Value proposition
- Department-level "elevator pitch"
- Prioritized objectives
- Concept of Operations (CONOPS)
- Mid-term planning
- Long-term planning
- Marketing plan
- Financial plan
- Capability Maturity Model (CMM) target definitions
The CBP can serve as a foundational element in your organization's cybersecurity program. It can stand alone or be paired with other specialized products we offer.
What Problems Does The CBP Solve?
- Lack of In House Security Experience - Writing security documentation is a skill that many good cybersecurity professionals simple are not proficient at and avoid the task at all cost. On top of that, writing a cybersecurity-specific business plan is a skill that not many CISOs have experience with, so it is an often outsourced or neglected activity.
- Budget Justification - Having a coherent plan is a valuable tool for a CISO to defend budgets, since it enables the CISO to paint a long-term picture for the cybersecurity department and why the investment makes good business sense.
- CISO Career Protection - Having a documented business plan is valuable from a CISO's perspective more than just in defending staffing and budget requests. In cases where a viable business plan is rejected from a funding perspective by senior management, a CISO at least has evidence of appropriate due care on their part. In the event of a breach/incident where the CISO is "on the hook" for the blame, a CISO can demonstrate how the CIO/CEO/CXO that rejected the CISO's recommended practices and funding request(s) that could have prevented the incident now own that risk. It is a way to pass risk up the chain of command.
Our customers choose the Cybersecurity Business Plan (CBP) because they:
- Have a need for a timely and cost-effective solution to document their cybersecurity strategy and roadmap.
- Need to be able to edit the document to their specific needs.
- Have documentation that is directly linked to best practices, laws and regulations
- Need an affordable solution
How Does the CBP Solve These Problems?
- Clear Documentation - The CBP provides comprehensive cybersecurity business planning documentation to prove that your security strategy and roadmap exists. This equates to a time saving of considerable staff time and tens of thousands of dollars in either lost productivity or consultant expenses!
- Time Savings - The CBP can provide your organization with a semi-customized solution that requires minimal resources to fine tune for your organization's specific needs.
Being a Microsoft Word document, you have the ability to add/remove/edit content, as needed. We've provided an "80-90% solution" from the perspective of formatting and content, where you merely polish off the specifics that only you would know about your organization and its culture. While we did the heavy lifting in the research and development of this cybersecurity planning document, we estimate that a mid-sized organization should be able to finalize the CBP in about 5-10 hours. That final customization focuses on "owning" the document where you wordsmith the example statements that we provide so that the content of the document is specific to your organization and relates to specifically what you do.
Ideally, your organization's CISO is the individual who will edit/finalize the CBP. Fortunately, the CBP is written in a format that it can be "ghost written" for the CISO by their subordinates (we understand the time constraints many CISOs experience and planning functions are often delegated). In these instances, the CBP can easily be edited and finalized based on the CISO's existing guidance to subordinates. It is important to understand that goals are not the same thing as a strategy! It is often the case where there are a lot of good ideas and "shopping lists" for products/initiatives, but there is a lack of a formalized strategy to accomplish a set of goals. This is where the CBP is a valuable resource, since it creates a formal cybersecurity strategy and roadmap!
Product Example - CBP - Cybersecurity Business Plan Template
The CBP is a fully-editable Microsoft Word document that you can customize for your specific cybersecurity business planning needs. You can see the table of contents below to see everything the CBP covers. Due to the concise nature of the document, we are limited to what content we can share publicly for examples.
View Product Example
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Cost Savings Estimate - Cybersecurity Business Plan (CBP) Template
The CBP is affordable when compared to alternatives. The cost is equivalent to about five (5) hours of a cybersecurity professional's time, which is a fraction of the time it would take to create a similar document on its own. When you look at the costs associated with either (1) hiring an external consultant to write cybersecurity documentation for you or (2) tasking your internal staff to write it, the cost comparisons paint a clear picture that buying from ComplianceForge is the logical option. Compared to hiring a consultant, you can save months of wait time and tens of thousands of dollars. Whereas, compared to writing your own documentation, you can potentially save over a hundred hours of staff time and the associated cost of lost productivity. Purchasing the CBP from ComplianceForge offers these fundamental advantages when compared to the other options for obtaining quality cybersecurity documentation:
- For your internal staff to generate comparable documentation, it would take them an estimated 120 internal staff work hours, which equates to a cost of approximately $9,000 in staff-related expenses. This is about 1-2 months of development time where your staff would be diverted from other work.
- If you hire a consultant to generate this documentation, it would take them an estimated 80 consultant work hours, which equates to a cost of approximately $24,000. This is about 2-4 weeks of development time for a contractor to provide you with the deliverable.
- The CBP is approximately 8% of the cost for a consultant or 22% of the cost of your internal staff to generate equivalent documentation.
- We process most orders the same business day so you can potentially start working with the CBP the same day you place your order.
The process of writing cybersecurity documentation can take an internal team many months and it involves pulling your most senior and experienced cybersecurity experts away from operational duties to assist in the process, which is generally not the most efficient use of their time. In addition to the immense cost of hiring a cybersecurity consultant at $300/hr+ to write this documentation for you, the time to schedule a consultant, provide guidance and get the deliverable product can take months. Even when you bring in a consultant, this also requires involvement from your internal team for quality control and answering questions, so the impact is not limited to just the consultant's time being consumed.
Template For Creating A Cybersecurity Strategy & Roadmap
ComplianceForge provides businesses with exactly what they need to for cybersecurity planning at a very affordable cost. Similar cybersecurity business planning documentation can be found in Fortune 500 company that have dedicated cybersecurity staff. The architect for the CBP is a former military officer and MBA who has years of experience building cybersecurity business plans and has extensively written on the subject.
Optional Professional Services (Add On)
ComplianceForge offers optional professional services to customize purchased documentation. Professional services are not required to customize ComplianceForge documentation. However, some clients want our subject matter expertise to help customize their documentation to meet their specific business needs. If you have any questions about our professional services, please contact us at: www.complianceforge.com/contact-us/.
We offer our professional services in bundles of: five (5), ten (10) & twenty (20) hours.
Purchased professional service hours will expire after 120 days (4 months) from the time of purchase before they expire.