Reducing cybersecurity budget a ‘high-risk strategy’ – Saros Consulting co-founder.

Irish businesses show a split approach to cybersecurity according to a new report, with only half of surveyed IT leaders acknowledging increasing their cybersecurity budget this year, while one in four reduced spending for 2026.

The insights stem from a new Saros Consulting report carried out by Censuswide, which surveyed 200 IT decision-makers in organisations in Ireland with more than 250 employees.

This comes at a time when cybersecurity threats are growing continuously, with bad actors increasingly employing AI tools to bolster their approach.

According to the survey, increased investment in cybersecurity is enabling leaders to explore new avenues to bolster their defences, with 30pc of those surveyed willing to pay bounties to experts who can expose vulnerabilities.

This is already happening in practice, with around 27pc having previously done this.

However, only 50pc are confident that they can detect attackers before any damage is done, while 51pc said they have an incident response plan. Only 54pc of those surveyed said that they test their incident response plan once or more per year.

Lacking an effective response plan can often lead to significant financial and reputational damage for businesses at the hands of bad actors, with a different survey from 2025 reporting that nearly one-third of large enterprises in Ireland paid at least one ransom to cybercriminals over the year.

The average that Irish businesses spent on cyber ransoms amounted to nearly €700,000.

Meanwhile, businesses need to keep up with the constant change in the cybersecurity landscape by ramping up their own infrastructure.

In a recent interview with SiliconRepublic.com, the National Cyber Security Centre’s director of resilience Joseph Stephens shared his concerns around the effect advanced AI models such as Anthropic’s Mythos would have on small businesses in the country.

The newest Saros and Censuswide report finds that 55pc of the surveyed IT leaders said their legacy systems are increasing their organisation’s cybersecurity risk. To tackle this, large enterprises in Ireland are dedicating 28pc of their IT budgets to mandatory system upgrades, although 30pc of their budgets are dedicated to maintaining systems that the leaders know should be replaced.

“Reducing cybersecurity budgets at a time of increasing threat complexity is a high-risk strategy for large enterprises,” said Ray Armstrong, the co-founder and co-CEO of Saros Consulting.

“Cybersecurity underpins every aspect of modern IT strategy, from digital transformation to regulatory compliance. Organisations who deprioritise it risk exposing not only their systems, but also their customers, their reputation and their long-term resilience.”

Justin van der Spuy, also co-founder and co-CEO of Saros Consulting, added: “There is a clear disconnect between the scale of today’s cyber threats and the decision by some large organisations to reduce investment in this area.

“What is needed now is strategic clarity and a long-term approach to resilience. Businesses must ensure they are supported by experienced partners who can help them navigate evolving threats and increasing regulatory complexity.”

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