More than a third of organisations are preparing to pump up their data security budgets in 2009, despite a prevailing climate for IT spending reduction.
Supporting evidence for the trend comes in industry data polled from 200 IT and security professionals last month for secure web gateway systems supplier Finjan. Alongside the 30% segment planning increases, another 40% of respondent sites expect their IT security budget for 2009 will at least remain the same as last year.
The company suggested an increased level of spending is warranted to help counter rising cybercrime attacks.
Organisations face an ever-increasing wave of attacks, and face some new challenges next year, it said.
According to work at Finjan’s Malicious Code Research Centre, which has been covering the evolution of online crime in recent years, cyber criminals are using new tools to automate the process of spreading infections.
In its last Web Security Trends Report, the MCRC showed how PDFs and Flash files that are normally considered to be safe are now being used to carry malicious code. Notably, within big online ad networks cyber criminals can exploit a browser-vulnerability to install a Trojan, the San Jose, California-based company has warned.
These sort of new threats, not to mention the pressure on business to comply with new regulatory requirements, will help to sustain the momentum of the enterprise information security strategy.
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Finjan’s survey found that the upward trend in IT security budget allocation was more pronounced in the financial and governmental sectors than in others.
