Press Release Summary = Expenditure on IT security products and services was worth an estimated £1.44bn in 2004, with sales having increased by 29.5% over 2003. If companies\' internal spending on IT security staff is included, the figure rises to £2.
Press Release Body = IT Security - Market Report
Expenditure on IT security products and services was worth an estimated £1.44bn in 2004, with sales having increased by 29.5% over 2003. If companies\' internal spending on IT security staff is included, the figure rises to £2.11bn, which is equivalent to around 2.9% of all IT budgets. The two main sectors covered by this report are IT security products, which includes hardware and software, and IT security services, which includes consultancy, systems integration, training and outsourcing. In 2004, the market split was approximately 60:40 between products and services.
Spending on IT security (both internal and external) is taking a growing share of IT budgets, although many organisations continue to underinvest in this vital area. A large proportion of UK businesses still regard security as an overhead rather than an investment. IT security\'s increasing share of total IT spending is due to the constant rise in the number, sophistication and variety of threats faced by organisations and the resulting growth in the number of breaches suffered. At the same time, the cost of each breach suffered is rising, with around 70% of breach costs relating to business lost due to computer downtime, and this element of cost tends to rise with economic activity. Key Note estimates that, in 2003, 19.7 million breaches were suffered by UK organisations, at a total cost of £38.42bn.
Changing business practices, such as outsourcing, globalisation, teleworking and e-business, which have led to the development of distributed corporate structures and greater networking of computers within and between organisations, are making modern IT systems more vulnerable to attacks.
Given the growing sophistication of attacks, many organisations are adopting a `layered security\' approach, which combines solutions such as desktop anti-virus, server and gateway anti-virus, content filtering, and proactive techniques such as behaviour analysis and heuristics. Moreover, to reduce the points of vulnerability in a system, organisations increasingly want to buy integrated platforms/appliances, rather than individual, standalone products. Security appliances are taking an increasing share of the market, causing hardware-based products to grow at the expense of software products.
Increasingly, security is being integrated into the computer network at the planning and operation stage. The importance of networking means that the modern secure network must allow access but in a controlled manner, so growing importance is being placed on identity and access management solutions. As the use of wireless and remote networking grows, so securing mobile and wireless devices and systems is becoming more important.
Spending on IT security products and services is forecast to show strong growth over the forecast period (2005 to 2009) with the main growth areas being: products and services that have a strong return on investment and make security more manageable; wireless and application security solutions; security audits and penetration testing; role-based access-control solutions; biometric technology; products and services that enforce corporate policy, comply with privacy regulations and limit legal liability; content management software; outsourcing; and security appliances.
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2025
