Things to consider when building a cybersecurity job proposal template

Before you write this type of proposal, think carefully about your organization’s current and future needs. Right now, you might need someone to assess risks and implement cybersecurity measures. Five years from now, however, you may need someone capable of supervising entry-level cybersecurity employees and keeping up with the needs of a growing business.

The main purpose of a job proposal is to convince key decision-makers that you need to create a new position, but you also need to consider your company’s team strategy and job title hierarchy. Then, you can make a business case for the new role.

Team strategy

Whether you’re a CIO or an IT project manager, you need to keep your team strategy in mind when making important decisions. Team strategy is just another name for the plan you use to reach department goals. For example, if you want to reduce the number of help desk tickets generated by 15% within a 3-month period, you need to follow a specific series of steps.

You also need to consider the following:

• Company goals
• Team structure
• Gaps in your staffing plan
• Current opportunities in the marketplace
• Potential return on investment

Company goals

Every employee has personal goals and department goals to meet, but they also play an important role in achieving company goals, which are specific targets related to the organization’s overall mission.

For example, if your mission is to help business owners build their own websites, you might have goals related to launching new services or increasing the amount of support available to existing customers. These are some of the most common examples of company goals:

• Increase revenue
• Maximize profits
• Secure an investment
• Launch a new product or service
• Reduce operational expenses
• Increase web traffic

As you write a job proposal, think about how a new cybersecurity role is likely to help your company achieve its goals. For example, if you want to reduce the costs associated with data breaches, hiring an cyber security specialist may help you implement measures designed to reach this goal.

Team structure

Team structure refers to the way your company organizes its teams. One of the most common structures is the functional team, which is a team composed of employees from the same department who have varying responsibilities. For example, if you have a functional IT team, you might have a help desk analyst, two support technicians, a network engineer and a database administrator working together to achieve company goals.

Cross-functional teams have members from different departments of a company. For example, you might have a team with a software engineer, project manager, UX designer and marketing specialist. Using cross-functional teams makes it easier for employees to collaborate.

Some companies use the market-based team structure, which allows team members to become experts in a specific product line or customer segment. For example, if you work for a software company, you may have products for consumers and products for businesses.

As you write your job proposal, think about how a new cybersecurity role will fit your preferred team structure. If you use functional teams, it’s easy to integrate a new role into your existing structure. If you use cross-functional or market-based teams, however, you need to do a little more planning before you hire a new IT employee. 

Gaps in your staffing plan

For optimal business results, you will need to form a well-balanced team. Hiring an IT security specialist is a good start, but you may need to add an information security analyst and a security engineer within the next few years. While it’s possible to be overstaffed or understaffed in IT and other critical areas, make sure any new role you add will bring new cybersecurity expertise and support your business needs.

Current opportunities and threats in the marketplace

You also need to consider how hiring a new employee can help you take advantage of current opportunities or mitigate current threats in the marketplace. If you’re not sure what opportunities and threats exist in your industry, perform a SWOT analysis:

• Strengths. Strengths are the positive internal factors that contribute to your company’s success. Significant cash reserves, highly experienced employees and strong brand image are examples of strengths.
• Weaknesses. Weaknesses are the negative internal factors that could prevent your company from reaching its full potential. For example,having the highest prices in its industry could be a weakness as customers may not want to spend as much as you’re charging.
• Opportunities. Opportunities are external factors that might help your company in some way. If you find out that a major competitor is going out of business, for example, you have a real opportunity to increase market share and fill the gap in the marketplace.
• Threats. Threats are the external factors that could cause your business to decline significantly. The rise in cyberattacks is a major threat for companies of all sizes.

Once you perform a SWOT analysis, it’s much easier to determine how hiring a cybersecurity professional can help you exploit new opportunities or reduce the risk associated with external threats.

Potential return on investment

Your job proposal should also explain how hiring a new cybersecurity employee is likely to pay off for your company. Be as specific as possible. Instead of saying that hiring a cybersecurity professional is likely to save the company money, estimate the potential savings.

When you calculate the anticipated ROI of creating a new position, don’t forget to include the costs associated with lost productivity. For instance, if you don’t hire a cybersecurity professional, your company may have to suspend operations for several days following a serious breach. Depending on how much revenue you normally generate, this could lead to millions of dollars in losses.

Job title hierarchy

Your company’s job title hierarchy shows how each position fits within the organization and explains what each position entails — or a little of both. For example, IT manager indicates that the job comes with managerial responsibilities, and it indicates that the role has IT-related duties.

When writing a job proposal, think carefully about how the new role is likely to fit your existing hierarchy. An employee’s title affects their job description and compensation. Titles may even affect your ability to attract and retain high-quality employees. Remember to be flexible with your hierarchy when updating job descriptions or job titles if you hire new employees or reorganize your team.

Business case

Finally, make a business case for the new role and explain how a cybersecurity professional will benefit your company. You know it would benefit your company to hire a cybersecurity professional, but you need to prove it to directors, vice presidents and board members, along with your company’s CHRO. Remember that these individuals all have personal and departmental goals to meet.

Directors and senior directors

Directors typically oversee one business function. For example, your company may have a director of IT or a senior director of IT. To convince a director-level employee that your organization should hire a cybersecurity professional, provide the following information:

• An overview of how the new role could help the IT department reach its goals
• An explanation of how the cybersecurity position fits the current structure of the IT team
• Details about how other roles within the department would change if key decision makers agreed to hire a cybersecurity professional

VPs and senior VPs

A vice president typically works to implement a CEO’s vision for a company. VPs and SVPs also develop policies, make strategic decisions and oversee employees with management duties. Include this information in your job proposal to persuade a VP or an SVP to approve the new position:

• An explanation of how a cybersecurity professional might help the business reach its overall goals
• An explanation of how hiring a cybersecurity employee fits your CEO’s vision
• A description of the opportunities and threats addressed by hiring a cybersecurity professional

Chief HR officer

Your company’s CHRO oversees all aspects of human capital management, from recruiting to employee relations. To win their support, be sure to explain how creating a new cybersecurity position is likely to affect the HR department. Here are a few examples:

• Adding a cybersecurity professional eliminates the need to hire an outside consultant for infosec training, reducing annual training costs.
• Hiring a cybersecurity professional demonstrates that you’re committed to protecting confidential data, which may increase the amount of trust each employee has in your organization.
• If your IT department is already stretched thin, hiring a cybersecurity professional might reduce your overtime costs or improve morale among your IT staff by lessening the amount of work each employee must complete.

Board of directors

Board members must protect the interests of shareholders, so they’re often concerned with financial performance and business growth. If you have to convince board members to approve your proposal, include the following information:

• Details about how hiring a cybersecurity professional will help the company improve its financial performance (i.e., reduced costs associated with data breaches)
• An explanation of how hiring a cybersecurity professional is likely to help shareholders
• A list of expansion opportunities that your company can take advantage of if you hire a cybersecurity employee

Example cybersecurity job proposal template

Feel free to use the example below as a template when you’re writing a cybersecurity job proposal.

To: [Recipients]

From: [Your Name]

Date: [Date]

Subject: Proposal to Create a [Job Title] Position at [Company Name]

Background:

In 2023, [Company Name] was the target of a data breach affecting more than 5,000 customers and employees. The perpetrator accessed the company’s database after launching a phishing attack, which prompted at least one employee to share their database login credentials. The employee mistakenly believed that they were communicating with the vendor who manages [Company Name]’s servers.

To date, the breach has cost [Company Name] more than $600,000. We’ve had to cover the following costs as a result of the phishing attack:

• Printing and mailing more than 5,000 letters to notify affected individuals of the breach
• Hiring an outside IT security consultant to help [Company Name] secure its IT resources
• Paying for credit monitoring for the affected individuals
• Lost productivity due to downtime associated with the attack and its aftermath

Local media outlets also covered the breach multiple times, reducing trust in our brand and making prospective customers hesitant to buy from [Company Name].

Proposed Solution:

I propose that [Company Name] create an IT security specialist position to reduce the risk of future breaches. The new employee would perform the following duties:

• Develop information security policies
• Train staff to recognize the warning signs of phishing, malware and other security concerns
• Conduct system vulnerability assessments and determine the best way to address each threat
• Test security strategies to determine which ones are the most effective
• Administer the company firewall
• Perform regular IT security audits
• Work with software and hardware vendors to address potential security concerns
• Research emerging threats to determine if company security policies need to be updated

Potential Value:

The recent data breach indicates a need for better staff training and stronger cybersecurity policies. If the employees who shared their login credentials knew how to spot the signs of a phishing attack, they might have ignored the perpetrator’s requests or at least consulted the IT department before sharing any confidential information.

It’s also possible that stronger security policies could have prevented the phishing attack. For example, if [Company Name] didn’t publish employee email addresses online, the attacker may have chosen a different target. Instead, the attacker was able to contact an employee directly, causing the employee to let down their guard.

In summary, hiring an IT security specialist has the potential to prevent costly cybersecurity incidents and help [Company Name] preserve its brand image. Creating this new role could also make [Company Name] more competitive in a crowded marketplace, as the company currently lags behind its top competitors in terms of data security and IT infrastructure.

Based on the anticipated benefits of hiring an IT security specialist, I believe that approving this proposal would save [Company Name] at least $180,000 per year. In addition to preventing costly data breaches, an experienced cybersecurity professional could also conduct information security training sessions, eliminating the need to pay an outside training consultant.