Let’s face it—making the case for security spending isn’t always easy. After all, if things are going right, attempts to attack your organization aren’t successful, which can make it difficult to make the case for investing in new technology. Yet for a security professional, doing that can be the difference between a compromise and a peaceful, sleep-filled night. According to a Forrester Research report, security investments in 2011 will reflect the tactical and reactive approach most organizations are taking to security, and will be positioned around a few themes, including new cyber-security threats, changing IT architectures (such as virtualization and the consumerization of enterprise IT) and compliance regulations. Such reactive security measures include acquiring firewall solutions to block known bad or "visibly anomalous activity," rather than the more methodical malware found today, and data-security tools that block or detect "inadvertent policy violations rather than malicious data theft," Forrester said. In its third-quarter 2010 survey of 2,058 IT security decision-makers at enterprises as well as small and midsize businesses in North American and Europe, Forrester found that the priority for many organizations is data security, while investments in application-security and identity-management projects may take a hit. Here is a look at how corporations globally are spending their IT security dollars.
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State of Security Market
IT security is a $35 billion market today, Forrester says. A combination of factors—including the threat landscape, the rise of new security technologies and changing data-security requirements—are driving growth. It also has led to a rising profile of CIOs—54 percent of enterprise CIOs report to a C-level executive.
Budget Size
Despite the recession, IT security spending largely avoided the declines experienced by other parts of the enterprise budget, Forrester research shows. That growth is expected to continue through 2011.
Spending Priorities
Many respondents feel data-security technologies are an important area of focus. Vulnerability management has also risen in importance, according to the report. Meanwhile, respondents expect spending on application-security and identity-management projects to drop.
Challenges to Security Budgets
While security budgets have grown, there has been an emphasis on tactical and reactive technologies. Many challenges that IT pros face in their budgets—including other priorities in the organization taking precedence—involve a business’ makeup and priorities, the report said. "To a large degree, a tactical and reactive approach to security is forced upon even the best-intentioned security heads due to the overwhelming range of responsibilities that their programs have accumulated over the years," according to Forrester.
Security Investments
Most security investments in 2011 will reflect the tactical concerns of businesses, Forrester found. This means a focus on reactive security measures such as firewalls and IDS/IPS (intrusion-detection systems/intrusion-protection systems).
Embracing Managed Services
Organizations are hopping aboard the managed-services train, and are also seeking more from their providers than before. Forrester predicts managed-security-services providers that are multifaceted solution providers, such as IBM and Wipro, will establish market dominance.
Security SAAS
E-mail filtering was the vanguard of SAAS (software as a service)-based security. However, there are other security solutions gaining a foothold as well, including vulnerability scanning, distributed denial-of-service protection and identity-management services.
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Let’s face it—making the case for security spending isn’t always easy. After all, if things are going right, attempts to attack your organization aren’t successful, which can make it difficult to make the case for investing in new technology. Yet for a security professional, doing that can be the difference between a compromise and a peaceful, sleep-filled night. According to a Forrester Research report, security investments in 2011 will reflect the tactical and reactive approach most organizations are taking to security, and will be positioned around a few themes, including new cyber-security threats, changing IT architectures (such as virtualization and the consumerization of enterprise IT) and compliance regulations. Such reactive security measures include acquiring firewall solutions to block known bad or "visibly anomalous activity," rather than the more methodical malware found today, and data-security tools that block or detect "inadvertent policy violations rather than malicious data theft," Forrester said. In its third-quarter 2010 survey of 2,058 IT security decision-makers at enterprises as well as small and midsize businesses in North American and Europe, Forrester found that the priority for many organizations is data security, while investments in application-security and identity-management projects may take a hit. Here is a look at how corporations globally are spending their IT security dollars.