IT budget planning and identity security: where teams are missing risk

TL;DR: IT budgeting is usually framed as cost control, but Zluri’s guidance shows it is really a prioritisation exercise across run, grow, and transform spend, recurring renewals, equipment refresh cycles, and early vendor benchmarking. That matters because identity, access, and security tooling decisions are often buried inside broader IT plans, where underfunded lifecycle controls quietly accumulate risk.

NHIMG editorial — based on content published by Zluri: IT Teams IT Budget Planning: 7 Tips to Keep in Mind

By the numbers:

• Only 5.7% of organisations have full visibility into their service accounts.
• 97% of NHIs carry excessive privileges, increasing unauthorised access and broadening the attack surface.
• 71% of NHIs are not rotated within recommended time frames, increasing the risk of compromise over time.

Questions worth separating out

Q: How should IT teams budget for identity and access controls?

A: They should treat identity and access controls as recurring operational spend, not optional project spend.

Q: Why do identity programmes often lose funding over time?

A: Identity programmes lose funding when leaders classify ongoing governance work as one-time implementation rather than recurring assurance.

Q: When should organisations start vendor evaluation for identity tools?

A: They should start early, before budget approval locks in assumptions about scale, integration, and support.

Practitioner guidance

• Separate identity run costs from transformation spend Place access reviews, entitlement maintenance, certificate renewal, and NHI rotation in the run category so they are protected from discretionary cuts.
• Map recurring identity obligations to forecasted budgets Build a schedule for licences, renewals, offboarding, recertification, and infrastructure support so finance sees them as predictable obligations.
• Review equipment and platform age against identity risk Tie refresh decisions for laptops, servers, and related platforms to the controls they support, especially where aging systems weaken access governance, logging, or endpoint trust.

What's in the full article

Zluri's full article covers the practical budgeting considerations this post intentionally leaves at the governance level:

• How to review prior-year IT spend against invoices, receipts, and bank statements
• How to separate capital, operating, and project spending when building the budget
• How to assess device refresh cycles and recurring software licence renewals
• How to compare vendors early to negotiate price, discounts, and fit

👉 Read Zluri's guide to IT budget planning for identity and operations teams →

IT budget planning and identity security: where teams are missing risk?

Explore further

View Full Forum →  |  NHI Foundation Course →