IT security escapes spending cuts

Western Europe will buck the trend in declining enterprise IT investment when it comes to IT security spending, an analyst firm said late yesterday.

IDC said that IT security would be the one area that would largely escape the affects of the global economic downturn.

Spending across 16 European countries on security hardware, software and services will increase this year to €12.5 billion (£10 billion), up 17.3 per cent from 2007. But IDC cautioned that this growth rate would decline slightly over the next four years, to 11.8 per cent by 2012.

"Western European countries are still facing major security gaps in identity and access management, threat mitigation and compliance solutions," wrote Eric Domage, IDC analyst and the note's author.

European companies were likely to want to safeguard data, information systems and intellectual property more closely in the face of more fierce competition as a result of tougher economic times.

Other trends likely to influence a renewed focus on IT security spending included the development of new unified threat management (UTM) hardware devices for managing multiple network security tasks, and increased regulation in areas such as online banking.

It also said the ever-present threat of further data security breaches, fuelled in part by increased use of mobility hardware such as laptops and PDAs, would make the next two to three years a "period of investment catch-up" in the region.

It also said the proportion of IT budgets spent on security in Europe would remain between five and 15 per cent.

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