IT security budgets expected to rise

Enterprise investment in information technology security in the United States is likely to hit 12 percent of total IT budgets over the next couple of years, according to a new study.

The average security investment will peak at 8 percent to 12 percent by 2006 in the United States and reach the same level in Europe and Asia by 2007. These budgets will stabilize between 5 percent and 8 percent by 2008 in the United States and in Europe and the Asia-Pacific region by 2009, the Meta Group said in a new study released on Monday.

The average spending on IT security in Global 2000 companies currently is 4 percent of their IT budget, the market researcher said. The figure has been rising--much faster in the United States due to concerns that include computer crime. The rate of increase has been much slower in Europe.

In the Asia-Pacific region, mature economies such as Singapore in Japan are seeing a rise similar to Europe's. Other maturing markets, such as Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, are only beginning to invest in security.

Recent surveys of U.S. businesses show that security software figures among top priority items in their growing IT budgets.

"Information security remains a top-five issue for CIOs, and the debate regarding appropriate investment levels continues to rage," Tom Scholtz, vice president of the Meta Group's Security and Risk Strategies advisory service, said in a statement. "Although capturing and benchmarking information security spending is complicated, security teams must model overall investment to track parity with industry peers and account for the cost of satisfying business requirements for managing information risk."

[michaeldavis]

it security budgets

Hope that these people in "IT" are intelligent enough to
include Apple Macs in their security budget. A friend of
mine just came back from visiting his friend who worked
for Amazon in Seattle- his friend told him that the last
worm virus that Amazon got affected all their "PCS" but
fortunately none of the Apple Macs were affected! When
are big corporations going to wake up to the simple fact
that Mac OSX is far more secure, far easier to use than
Windows-to me they have all been blinkered to Apple by
their own IT staff who are scared of losing their jobs
because you dont need as many people to maintain an
Apple network with pcs alongside it. Over here in Jersey for
example the local governing body, schools and council use
2500 Apple Macs and they only have one(yes thats right) IT
man to fix and maintain their computers(also by the way he
isnt all that busy!) Am I making any obvious point here,
does something stink a bit? I think so!