Cost benchmarks
Compare your security spend against peers of similar industry and size to judge whether your costs are reasonable.
Last updated June 1, 2026
Knowing what you spend is useful. Knowing whether that spend is reasonable is what changes decisions. Cost benchmarks place your spending next to peers of similar industry and size so you can tell the difference between a fair price and an outlier.
How benchmarks work
Forest compares your allocated spend against a privacy-preserving peer average drawn from organizations in your industry and size band. The comparison shows how your costs sit relative to that cohort, not the individual figures of any single peer.
The output is a difference, not a verdict. Spending above the peer average is not automatically wrong, and spending below it is not automatically safe. A higher figure might reflect a deliberate investment in a capability you have rated compliance-required. A lower figure might mean you are underinvesting where it counts.
Reading a benchmark sensibly
Use benchmarks to ask better questions, not to chase the average:
Where you spend well above peers, check whether the capability justifies it.
Where you spend below peers on a high-criticality capability, ask whether coverage is thin.
Pair the cost view with maturity. Paying more than peers for a capability you have barely matured is a clear signal to dig in.
A peer comparison is a performance difference, not a gap. It tells you how you compare, not what you must fix. The decision stays yours.
Benchmarks work best read alongside your own allocation data. Start from Spend allocation, then let the peer view sharpen where you focus. Where cost looks high without a clear reason, move on to Overspend and overlap insights.