The Operational Cost of Cybersecurity

The Hidden Cost of optimizing for “More” instead of “Better”.

Nov 06, 2025

In finance, operational expenses, or OpEx, is the money it takes to keep something running.

Most of the time, you don’t just buy an asset and walk away; you continue to pay to maintain it. Take an investment property, for example. You pay for staff, maintenance, utilities, and software to sustain operations.

Cybersecurity is no different.

Every new detection rule, workflow automation, or control we deploy carries its own operational expenditure. It requires continuous validation, clear documentation, and regular upkeep via updates or deprecations.

But more importantly, it consumes the scarcest resource in cybersecurity: skilled humans. There simply aren’t enough experienced security professionals to go around, and every new control competes for their limited time, focus, and expertise.

On the same note, building new things is great; as a matter of fact, I encourage all cybersecurity engineers to be builders. However, building is a capital expenditure (CapEx). It’s exciting, one-time, and easy to celebrate.

Maintaining what we build? That’s OpEx. It’s invisible, mundane, constant, but essential.

The more you build, the more likely you are to owe, especially if you cut corners. And like financial debt, it doesn’t disappear. It compounds. You’re borrowing time from your future self, and eventually, the bill comes due.

But enough doom and gloom. This issue isn’t meant for that. It simply expresses this sentient problem as it relates to cyber defense.

Disclaimer

This post is not about actual financial budgets for running a cybersecurity team; instead, it’s a lengthy metaphor on the operational cost of security decisions. The unseen expenses we incur in time, attention, and energy every time we add a new detection, control, or process. It’s about how every rule, workflow, and automation has a “maintenance bill”.

Detection Engineering: Hidden Subscription Fees

Writing a detection rule feels like a win. Even better when it catches an actual threat. You get the dopamine hit of adding coverage, expanding visibility, and contributing to your SOC’s “rule count.”

But every detection you create is a new “subscription”. More specifically, a line item on your cybersecurity operational budget.

The starting cost is the time spent building the detection and testing for precision. Then comes the forever tax of cycles spent triaging inevitable false positives. Then there are hidden fees in the form of headspace needed to document, tune, and maintain as adversaries shift or your environment evolves.

Over time, these costs may accumulate into what I call detection debt. This is the backlog of unmaintained rules and unreviewed alerts that quietly bleed efficiency from your Cybersecurity Operations function.

And like real debt, it then accrues interest if you don’t pay it down quickly or reel in your “spending” habits: more noise, more fatigue, more missed signals.

A future issue of the newsletter will address the topic of detection deprecation which may help keep your budget on track.

Incident Response: Expensive Attention

Incident Response operates under high pressure, where time is capital in a very valuable currency.

And just as a company’s burn rate determines its financial health, your alert volume and false positive rate determine your cognitive health, especially for the engineers or analysts triaging or responding.

When everything triggers, nothing stands out. It’s just like the boy who cried wolf. When security alerts lose credibility through repetition, coupled with little detection accountability, the real threats get ignored.

Each noisy alert from your detection engineering “subscription fees”, misconfigured automation workflows, or irrelevant security escalation/investigation costs minutes, which compound into hours across the team.

Ultimately, the time (capital) spent, or otherwise wasted, in a security incident could be the difference between containment and compromise. This is where those hidden fees start charging interest and bleeding you even more of your most finite IR resource - time.

GRC: The Cost of Compliance Theater

Governance, Risk, and Compliance (GRC) resides in the fine print of cyber defense, which is precisely where operational costs accumulate quietly. Every new framework, audit requirement, or control mapping is like adding another recurring bill.

At first, it looks harmless. One more spreadsheet, one more evidence collection task.

However, over time, these small costs accumulate into process debt, resulting in endless reviews, repetitive documentation, and reactive reporting loops.

Essentially, the result of GRC becoming a checklist rather than a compass. OpEx skyrockets without improving actual security outcomes. Policies become artifacts. Audits become rituals.

You end up paying to maintain a compliance theater instead of actual cyber resilience. Everyone loves a good show, but it should not come at the expense of actual security.

Maturity

Just as financial maturity isn’t necessarily measured by how much you make but by how much you actually keep, Security maturity should not simply be measured solely by how much you deploy.

It should also measure how much you sustain without drowning in your own complexity.

And your cost model should account for both maintenance and development.

I don’t want to reduce operational cost to a mere financial metaphor; I’ll dare to say that it’s a mindset.

It forces you to ask:

Can this <insert control here> survive without me?
Can this <insert control here> be maintained six months from now?
Can this <insert control here> adapt to changes in the environment?

If the answer is no, it’s not ready for production — it’s just another liability waiting to mature.

Every control is a contract. Every rule is a recurring bill.

The longer you operate without acknowledging this, the more expensive your security becomes.

💭 Closing Thought

What’s your team’s real operational cost? Audit your detections, playbooks, and controls to see what you’re still paying for in time, toil, and attention.