Why Cybersecurity Is a Recurring Expense, Not a One-Time Purchase
Most business owners approach cybersecurity the way they approach buying a truck. You pay for it, it shows up, and it works. Maybe you get the oil changed now and then. But cybersecurity doesn’t work like that, and misunderstanding this is one of the most expensive mistakes a small or mid-sized business can make.
The Myth of “Set It and Forget It”
There’s a persistent belief that you can buy a firewall, install antivirus software, and check the security box. It’s an understandable assumption. You purchased a product. It should do its job. But cybersecurity isn’t a product. It’s a process.
Threats evolve daily. The attack methods used against businesses today look nothing like the ones used two years ago. Ransomware variants change. Phishing techniques get more convincing. Vulnerabilities in the software your business depends on are discovered constantly. A security posture that was solid six months ago may already have gaps.
That firewall you installed? It needs firmware updates, rule adjustments, and log monitoring to stay effective. That antivirus software? It needs updated threat definitions, configuration tuning, and someone watching for alerts. None of this happens on its own.
Why So Many SMBs Still Have Almost Nothing
After eighteen years in this business, I keep seeing the same thing. Small and mid-sized business after small and mid-sized business with little to no real cybersecurity protection. When I talk to those owners, the reasons almost always fall into one of five buckets:
- They don’t have the revenue to purchase what they actually need.
- They’re unwilling to spend the money, for any number of reasons.
- They don’t know what to buy or who to ask.
- They don’t trust their IT team or provider enough to act on the advice.
- They don’t see enough value in it to justify the cost.
There’s a sixth reason I’ve only seen play out once in my career, a genuinely smart risk calculation where the numbers actually argued against spending. That is the exception, not the rule.
Where the Recurring Costs Actually Live
When you break cybersecurity down into its core components, nearly every one of them demands ongoing attention and investment.
Monitoring and Detection. Threats don’t operate on business hours. Security monitoring means having systems and people watching for suspicious activity around the clock. Automated tools help, but they generate alerts that need human analysis. False positives need to be identified and filtered. Real threats need immediate response.
Patching and Updates. Every piece of software in your environment needs regular patching. Operating systems, applications, firmware on network devices. Falling behind is one of the most common ways businesses get compromised. Turning on Windows Update is not the same thing as managed patch management. Real patch management means monitoring for completeness, pushing updates across all endpoints centrally, and making sure nothing slips through. That function typically lives inside a Remote Monitoring and Management (RMM) platform, and it never stops.
Endpoint Protection. Security agents on your workstations and servers need management. Configurations drift. New devices get added. Policies need adjustment as your business changes. The agents themselves require licensing renewals, and the platforms behind them are constantly being updated to address new threat intelligence.
Active Monitoring of Your Detection Tools. Here’s the thing about EDR and MDR platforms. They are only as good as what happens when they alert. If nobody is watching the console, the alert might as well not exist. Skilled technicians who know the platforms, who can read the signals, and who notify you when something needs attention are not optional. They’re the whole point.
Employee Training. Your team is your largest attack surface. Phishing simulations, security awareness training, and policy reinforcement need to happen regularly. People forget. New employees join. The threats they need to recognize keep changing.
Incident Response and Remediation. When something does happen, and eventually something will, you need the ability to respond quickly. That means having a plan in place, people who know how to execute it, and the tools to contain and recover from an incident. This capability doesn’t materialize on demand. It has to be maintained.
Compliance and Documentation. If your business operates in a regulated industry, your security controls need documentation, regular assessment, and updates as regulations change. HIPAA, PCI, CMMC, and other frameworks aren’t static. They evolve, and your compliance posture has to evolve with them.
The Labor Problem
Here’s the part that catches most business owners off guard. The labor cost of doing cybersecurity well is substantial. Skilled cybersecurity professionals are expensive and in short supply. Building and maintaining secure system configurations takes specialized knowledge. Monitoring, tuning, and responding to security events takes dedicated time.
Most small and mid-sized businesses can’t justify a full-time security team. But they face the same threats as organizations that can. Ransomware doesn’t check your revenue before encrypting your files. A phishing attack doesn’t care how many employees you have.
This is exactly why cybersecurity has become a managed service for most businesses below the enterprise level. The recurring cost of outsourcing security to a team that does this full-time is almost always more sustainable than trying to build that capability internally.
What the Right Spend Actually Looks Like
A common question from owners is, “What percent of revenue should I spend?” The data gives a rough starting point. The average small company with less than $50 million in revenue spends about 6.9% of revenue on IT overall. Mid-sized companies between $50 million and $2 billion spend about 4.1%. Larger enterprises over $2 billion spend a relatively tiny 3.2%. Percentage-wise, smaller businesses often outspend larger ones, because their infrastructure costs don’t scale the way revenue does.
Cybersecurity is a subset of that, and the right number depends on what you have to lose. A better way to think about it is per endpoint per month. At the low end, below about $10 per endpoint per month, you are mostly buying tools and hoping someone uses them correctly. Around $25 per endpoint per month is where things start to get genuinely useful. You get managed patching, someone actively watching your detection tools, and a relationship with a team you can call when something goes sideways. You are not starting from scratch with a Google search at 11 PM on a Friday.
Have you ever had a major legal issue and tried to find $500 worth of lawyering to solve it in the moment? It doesn’t happen. The relationship has to exist before the emergency does. Security works the same way.
Think Like a Cybercriminal
To spend these dollars wisely, you have to understand what’s actually attractive inside your network. What data would a criminal want? Where are your connections to customers or suppliers that could become a supply-chain entry point? Do you store sensitive customer data that makes you a ransomware target?
Proactively walking through worst-case scenarios helps you right-size your spend. A realistic risk assessment tells you what you actually need to protect, how quickly you need to recover if something goes wrong, and how much data loss your business can tolerate. That assessment becomes the foundation for a security investment that’s right-sized for your business, not oversized and not dangerously thin.
And because threats change, this is not a once-a-year exercise. Quarterly re-evaluation is a healthier rhythm. Ask what part of your business is most exposed to new threats, then shift resources to match.
Avoid Security Theatre
One warning. There are a lot of pseudo-security products out there that look impressive and do very little. Rather than hunting for tools on your own, find a locally respected managed service provider and ask for a meeting with one or two of their long-standing clients. Any MSP client that hasn’t been hit with ransomware in the past five years is almost certainly well protected. That conversation will tell you more than a vendor demo ever will.
Thinking About It the Right Way
The most helpful shift in perspective is this: cybersecurity is an operational expense, like insurance, like accounting, like IT support itself. You wouldn’t hire an accountant once, have them set up your books, and then never speak to them again. You wouldn’t buy an insurance policy and never review your coverage.
Cybersecurity works the same way. The landscape changes. Your business changes. The protection has to keep pace.
If $10 per endpoint is what you have, spending it is still better than spending nothing. Security is not all or nothing. A business can absolutely go under trying to buy every available control, and if you have no computers, no email, and no internet, congratulations, you are perfectly secure and also not running a business. The real answer has always been three things: calculate your risk, set a budget that matches your revenue and exposure, and find someone you trust to translate those two into the right controls.
The Bottom Line
If someone tells you they can secure your business with a one-time purchase, be skeptical. Real cybersecurity is an ongoing commitment. The threats don’t stop, so the protection can’t either.
The question isn’t whether cybersecurity will be a recurring expense. It will. The question is whether you’re spending those dollars strategically, protecting what matters most, and getting real security value in return. If you want to talk through where you stand today and what a right-sized security program would look like for your business, reach out. We can start with a conversation and go from there.
Brian Largent
Father to five, husband to one, founder, CEO, and all around swell fella (or so I'm told)
