IT security spending to increase

Spending on IT security is forecast to see its biggest growth in five years, with a survey finding that more than 52 per cent of respondents expecting their companies to boost investment.

According to the Financial Times, this is a 38 per cent improvement over last year, and is a result of reports that while the overall incidents of security breaches are falling, those companies that have been successfully attacked are hit hard.

Around 20 per cent of those companies who had experienced a data breach lost money as a result – compared to 14 per cent in 2009 and eight per cent in 2008 – while intellectual property theft has trebled over the last three years to 15 per cent.

“A lot of people when it was broad, mass attacks like viruses, were very aware,” Gartner’s lead internet security analyst, John Pescatore told the FT.

“The whole goal of targeted attacks is for them not to know. But they are doing more damaging things, like stealing customer data and passwords.”