Your physical security budget: Who pays and how much?
In many organizations, the cost of data center security is a shared expense -- or at least it should be. How much then should you be spending on security and how much of that should be picked up by other business units?
In many organizations, the cost of data center security is a shared expense —or at least it should be. How much then should you be spending on security and how much of that should be picked up by other business units?
As businesses plan out their data center budgets, some consideration must be given to physical security. Realistically, what percentage of your budget should be for physical security? Also, how much of the cost of physical security does your data center incur as opposed to other business units, such as facilities and security?
MORE INFORMATION:
- Learn about the primary issues related to physical security in Lesson 9 of Security School.
- The aviation and transportation communities offer an example of integrated logical and physical security.
- Time will narrow the gap between physical and IT security.
The size of your physical security budget is predicated on how much you are anticipating your physical security system to grow during the time frame of your budget. For existing data centers where physical security has been installed and you are merely attempting to estimate what you will require for a budget to maintain the installed components and systems, the integrator who is contracted to provide you with service should be able to provide you with an exact service and maintenance number. However, I would recommend adding 20% to that number for any unforeseen, outside of contract maintenance costs.
For future project budgeting, you should be able to get a hold of what your facilities department has planned for projects that require physical security and estimate what the security costs related to those projects will represent. You will need to determine what the unique physical security requirements are for each project because they can vary however, using 1.0-1.5% of a total projects construction cost should suffice.
The cost you incur as opposed to what is charged back to projects and other departments will generally fall into the below four categories:
About the author
Security consultant Thor A. Mollung is managing director of MollungSystemsManagement. Mollung has more than 20 years of progressive management, operational management, systems management and technology integration experience in the industrial security industry with major worldwide companies such as Fidelity Investments, Mellon Bank and State Street Corporation. He can be reached at [email protected].
This tip originally appeared on our sister site, SearchDataCenter.com.