Efficient Enterprises Forecast To Reduce Security Budgets
By Mike Sachoff
Staff Writer
Article Date: 2010-06-15
While security risks are not going away for companies, efficient and secure enterprises will safely reduce the share of security spending by 3 to 6 percent of their overall IT budgets through 2011, according to a new report from Gartner.
"The average percentage of IT spending that security will comprise in 2010 is 5 percent, down from 6 percent in 2009," said Vic Wheatman, research director at Gartner.
"In 2009, in the face of a significant IT spending downturn, security spending grew slightly as a percentage of the IT budget, while many other IT spending areas were gutted. With the economic situation projected to improve in 2010, enterprises are ramping up investments in other spending areas faster than they are for IT security."
While security spending tied to "keeping the bad guys out" was not heavily affected by the economy and will remain on pace for 2010, a significant number of IT security organizations had to scale back on large, capital-intensive projects in 2009. In 2010, however, security spending that is more tightly tied to new business initiatives, such as complex identity and access management (IAM) and data loss prevention (DLP) projects, is beginning to reappear.
IAM is the top security priority for 20 percent of organizations surveyed in Gartner's 2010 CIO Survey, making it the clear leader among the most-important projects. More than 40 percent of organizations named intrusion prevention systems, patch management, DLP, antivirus and identity management among the top five security priorities for 2010.
"Determining how much a specific enterprise spends on information security is not an easy exercise, particularly during time of economic uncertainty," said Mr. Wheatman.
"However, regardless of industry or geography, we would urge organizations to use their best efforts to evaluate enterprise spending, while recognizing that they may not be capturing all security spending because of organizationally diffused security budgets."
About the Author:
Mike is a staff writer for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest ebusiness news.
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