Fred Harteis Editors Note: I really liked this article. It makes us all realize how much the new computer age is actually costing us. Anyone with an interest in the internet or protecting their company might find this article of interest.
Security is costing everyone more money. In a survey of 133 North American organizations with global operations and revenues exceeding $750 million, Gartner found that IT managers are continuing to increase their spending on firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention and anti-virus software.
Half of the survey participants said they increased IT security spending this year and expected to do so again in 2006.
Worldwide, IDC estimates that spending on security will be about $38 billion this year, up from about $32 billion last year.
Seven of ten of the respondents in the Gartner survey said they considered the systems and processes of the IT unit in which they work more secure than a year ago, mainly because better security controls now are in place.
But the threats keep coming, and from all directions.
"Organizations are more concerned about viruses and worms than any other security threat," said Rich Mogull, one of the Gartner analysts who directed the survey. "Outside hacking, or cracking, as well as identity theft and phishing also are considered significant issues. Cyber-terrorism was ranked last among the 11 threats listed in the survey."
In addition to firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, and anti-virus defenses, other areas accounting for the spending increases include patch management, strong user authentication, remote access, vulnerability assessment, user provisioning or identity management, security event correlation and reporting, spam filtering and Web site filtering or blocking.
Beyond that, more than one-third of the respondents cited the need to comply with new regulatory requirements, such as those mandated in the
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