Security budgets for companies in the £1–£10m revenue range are always tight. Every pound has to count. Spend it wrong, and you end up with expensive tools gathering dust while gaps remain wide open. Spend it right, and you cut risk, meet compliance demands, and let your team focus on growth instead of firefighting.
The question is simple: where should you start?
Start with the people problem, not the tech problem
Most mid-sized businesses rush to buy tech first. Firewalls, endpoint protection, maybe even a SIEM if someone saw it in a webinar. The truth is that most breaches in this bracket happen because someone clicked a bad link, reused a password, or left an open door somewhere.
The highest return comes from improving security behaviour across the company. That means real training people actually remember, phishing simulations to spot weak points, and access controls designed around real job roles rather than guesswork. It costs little, works fast, and reduces the risk dramatically. Skip this step, and no amount of technology will save you.
Fix identity and access before adding anything else
At this stage of growth, companies often have dozens of SaaS tools, new hires every month, and offboarding that gets done “when someone has time.” That’s a disaster waiting to happen.
The best money you’ll spend early on is for Single Sign-On so one identity rules them all, Multi-Factor Authentication on every account, and automated onboarding and offboarding workflows. Credentials are the crown jewels. Hackers buy stolen passwords for pennies, but when those passwords unlock your systems, the cost to you is measured in reputation, clients, and possibly the entire business.
Build a simple incident response plan
Breaches happen. Regulators don’t care if you’re small. Neither do your clients when their data is exposed. A single incident can undo years of trust and progress.
You don’t need a 50-page plan written by consultants. What you need is a simple one-pager with clear steps for what to do when things go wrong. Define who calls whom, in what order, and prepare communications in advance for clients and regulators. The cost is almost nothing, but the payoff comes the day something goes wrong and everyone knows exactly what to do.
Compliance without the chaos
ISO 27001, Cyber Essentials, SOC2; the alphabet soup of compliance scares many companies into over-engineering their security. Don’t do that.
Pick the standard that matters most to your biggest clients or regulatory obligations and start small. Do a gap analysis. Build a plan to fix the gaps. Document policies in plain English so staff can actually follow them. Use automation to collect evidence and reduce manual work. Compliance becomes far cheaper when it’s a byproduct of how you work, rather than a separate mountain to climb.
Only then look at tools
Once people, identity, incident response, and compliance are in place, you can start looking at tools. Endpoint Detection and Response keeps devices safe. Cloud Security Posture Management helps if you’re deep into AWS, Azure, or GCP. Backup systems prove their worth when you actually test restoring data instead of assuming they work.
The key is sequencing. Add one tool at a time. Buy for specific outcomes, not because it was trending on LinkedIn.
The takeaway
Security ROI at £1–£10m isn’t about spending more money. It’s about spending in the right order. Start with people. Fix identity and access. Build a simple incident plan. Get compliance under control. Only then start layering on the tech.
Do it in this order, and you’ll look smart to your board, your clients, and your future self when things inevitably go wrong.
If you want help building this roadmap for your business, book a quick call with me and we’ll get started.
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