Although I work for a government agency developing policies, practices, and architectures for a classified network, I have similar questions/need. Resources for security technologies and practices must compete with the other activities and missions of our network and an ROI approach offers a real opportunity to demonstrate to our senior management that a security practice is an appropriate allocation of resources. I imagine that our situation is similar, but clearly not identical to, a commercial situation where an executive level person or group must make resource allocation decisions based on the overall needs and missions of the organization.
Just another plea for thoughts and ideas. "As new discoveries are made, new truths disclosed, and manners and opinions change with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also and keep pace with the times." Thomas Jefferson -----Original Message----- From: tom jones [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] Sent: Thursday, March 28, 2002 1:54 PM To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Calculating ROI for a Network/Security Practice Hello, I was wondering if anyone had a good process/methodology for determining the ROI for the network/security practice. More specifically, how to demonstrate to the executive level that a certain technology is necessary in their terms: How will it save our company money? I know this is rather vague since most technologies will be looked at differently. For example, a tape backup system might be communicated as the price to implement vs. the price of 1+ "major disaters". How could you come up with the price of a "major disaster"? Another example (currently working with a client toward) is implementing an Intrusion Detection System. How would you demonstrate to managment that looking through firewall logs all day is not as efficient or effective as the monitoring of traffic "real-time" with the added functionality of event analysis? Thoughts and suggestions are greatly appreciated. __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Movies - coverage of the 74th Academy Awards� http://movies.yahoo.com/
