Case Study · Data Protection & Privacy
From: Marcus Webb, CFO — Meridian Health Analytics
To: You, incoming Head of Data Protection & Resilience
Re: Annual data protection budget
Last quarter's phishing near-miss rattled the board. We got lucky — nothing sensitive actually leaked — but it made clear we can't keep treating every dataset the same way. The board has approved $80,000 for data protection this year. Not a dollar more.
Below is every data asset our risk team flagged. You decide what gets protected, how, and what we accept the risk on. I don't need a report full of jargon — I need to know we won't be the next headline, and I need to know you spent this money like it was your own.
Costs shown are real — they come straight out of the $80,000. Effectiveness isn't shown as a number on purpose: judge each option the way a security lead would, based on what it actually does and what kind of asset it's protecting. You'll see exactly how it played out once you lock in your budget.