Companies fear breaches more than ever: only 4% are cutting security spending

Security spending will continue to grow in 2016, with 44% of enterprise security managers expecting to increase their budget in the next 90 days and only 4% cutting back, a survey shows.

As security budgets remain stable or grow for almost all organizations, security managers reported significant obstacles in fully realizing the benefits of the Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) solutions because of lack of staff expertise (44.4%) and inadequate staffing (27.8%). Some 56.9% of enterprises devote more than one professional to their SIEM implementation and monitoring.

Some 41% of respondents cited “hackers with malicious intent” as their top security concern over the past 90 days, followed by navigating compliance requirements (37%). As a consequence, 23% of security managers noted that compliance requirements were a key driver in getting projects approved, second only to risk assessment, cited by 25% of respondents.

According to a RAND Corporation study, the cost of managing cyber-security is expected to increase 38% over the next 10 years to almost $100 billion as companies spend more on cyber-security tools. Worldwide spending on cybersecurity has passed the $70-billion-a-year threshold and is growing 10% to 15% annually. Many chief information security officers believe hackers may gain the upper hand two to five years from now, requiring stronger and more innovative defenses. CIOs are not entirely certain of all the methods malicious hackers use to infiltrate systems, and businesses do not want to disclose their safety measures.

Another study, from Gartner Inc., predicts worldwide information security spending grew 4.7% in 2015 to $75.4 billion.

The results are based on responses from over 900 IT professionals, primarily in North America and EMEA, including 582 unique vendor evaluations in the third and fourth quarters of 2015.