IMIS
The Institute for the Management of Information Systems
UK organisations set to increase IT security spending
David Bicknell
about 1 year ago 0 Comments
New research suggests 2012 will see UK organisations spending more on IT security although security staff may be at a premium.
According to SearchSecurity.co.uk, a new research report from the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) on security trends and IT spending in the UK found that 83% of UK organisations will make security a higher priority in their 2012 IT budgets, compared with last year. Two-thirds of UK managers believe they have sufficient budgets to keep their organisations secure, and they plan to use that budget to tighten their security policies and prevent malware impacting the business.
Of 200 UK executives who responded to CompTIA’s survey, 69% expected their IT budgets to rise this year, and 83% said security would receive some of that increased funding. At the same time, 34% of UK respondents believed their security projects were being held back by a lack of budget or lack of support for new security investments.
Survey respondents also expressed concern about their difficulty in finding and hiring trained security professionals. In the UK, 42% said they had encountered difficulties in hiring security specialists in the past year, a picture mirrored in several other countries.
Search Security reported that when asked about security breaches, one-third of UK respondents said they had experienced a confirmed security breach in the last 12 months, and another third said they had probably suffered a breach. More than half of the respondents blamed the breaches on IT staff failing to follow policies and procedures.
Worldwide, security remains an ongoing concern. Last Friday, for example, Rwanda played host to a high profile banking and cyber security workshop that discussed how cyber fraud could be prevented. It followed the release of details of a survey conducted last year which indicated that banks in East Africa lost millions of dollars in cyber fraud.
According to Cyber Security Africa, the survey, conducted by Deloitte, found that banks in Kenya, Rwanda, Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia lost $245 million in cyber fraud. Cyber crime is particularly high in the East African Community, with first Kenya facing attacks followed by risks to Uganda and Rwanda. The most common cases include hacking, attacks by malicious insiders, card skimming, electronic file manipulation, and the circumvention of IT controls.
The one-day workshop in Kigali highlighted the key IT security threats, fraud, risk and regulatory issues affecting financial institutions, Government agencies, public and private organisations in their daily operations.