SME security budgets up for next year

A survey of 2,800 IT managers has shown that most are planning further increases in security budgets for next year.

Around 70 per cent of those questioned are planning to increase security spending in 2008.

A quarter of these plan to spend between seven and 10 per cent of their total budget on security, and 13 per cent plan to spend more than 15 per cent.

"The biggest challenge over the next five years is the ability to find vulnerabilities in systems and prevent unauthorised network access," said Arne Klein, vice president of marketing at security hardware vendor Astaro, and author of the report.

"The overall rise in IT spending on security will continue unabated, with managed security services gaining ground in almost every application."

The biggest concerns highlighted in the survey were vulnerability assessment, leakage of confidential data and protecting web applications from worms or hacker attacks via SQL/command injection.

The survey data indicated that UK companies are lagging behind their counterparts in the US, where security is predicted to take up 20 per cent of budgets.

It also backed up other research showing that UK businesses are not taking some security areas seriously, particularly wireless security.

Security investments remain a tough sell

IT staff struggle to make the case for return on investment  08 Feb 2007

UK firms get the IT security message

Barely one per cent of companies has no security in place  25 Sep 2006

Security software spend hit $7.4bn in 2005

Rise of 14.8 per cent year-on-year after strong antivirus sales  12 Sep 2006

Most enterprises admit IT security failures

17 per cent increase in incidents over the past three years  05 Jul 2006

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