IT security spending will respond to cybercrime threat in 2009

The IT security survey conducted by Finjan during December 2008 gave interesting results. The survey called Web Security Trends Report Q4 2008 was conducted among 200 IT and security professionals. It indicated that economic downturn caused cybercrime attacks in several online sectors. It aimed to determine the trends for allocating IT budgets in 2009 compared to 2008. 

The results reveal that the total IT budgets for 2009 tend to be reduced compared to 2008. However, this situation changed to good since organizations intend to dedicate a larger part of their total IT budgets to IT security.
During the survey the following key findings were observed:

* 38% of all respondents stated that they do not expect a change in their 2009 IT budgets, while 34% indicated that they expect them to be slightly smaller - reflecting the general declining trend in corporate budgets.

* 34% of the respondents indicated that their IT security budgets for 2009 will increase, indicating a general trend that organizations will allocate a larger part of their overall IT budget to IT security. 43% of all respondents expect their IT security budget for 2009 to remain the same.

* The survey also found that the upward trend in IT security budget allocation was more pronounced in the financial and governmental sectors than in others.

According to Yuval Ben-Itzhak, Chief Technology Officer at Finjan, the ingoing economic downturn caused additional difficulties for e-commerce and online businesses. And this process makes all budgets come under scrutiny. It is predicted that in order to get the most out of their spending and reduce the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of their IT investments the organizations do their best and try to be as effective as possible. Moreover, 2009 is going to be a real economic challenge to the mix. And organizations are looking for a comprehensive security solution with low TCO that covers all their Web security needs and is also simple and easy to manage.