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Technology concerns to increase security spend

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CIOL Bureau
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CAMBRIDGE, MASS.: SMB's spending towards IT security is going to up-take in 2010, said a new research reports by Forrester Research, Inc.

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Approximately 40 per cent of businesses will significantly increase their spending on new IT security technologies in 2010. Forty-two per cent of enterprises expect to increase IT security spending on new technologies by 5 per cent or more this year, and 37 per cent of small and medium-size businesses (SMBs) expect to do the same.

"As we move out of the recession, we expect to see security investments continue to grow, although the nature of that investment is changing," said Forrester analyst and vice president, Jonathan Penn.

While data security is perennially the largest budget item for IT organizations, the greatest spending increases are in the area of network security, where 40 per cent of enterprises and 36 per cent of SMBs expect to spend more in 2010.

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Interestingly, the new technology trend of utmost concern to IT security professionals is not cloud computing or data virtualization; it's the consumerization of IT — the proliferation of consumer devices in the workplace.

Nearly half of all enterprises (46 per cent) noted their concerns about smartphones, while 38 per cent of enterprises were concerned about Web 2.0 technologies. More than 80 per cent of businesses, large and small identified managing vulnerabilities and complex threats as a high priority in the coming year.

"In general, this follows the broader trend of IT losing centralized control of technology adoption, deployment, and use," writes Penn in a blog post.

"It's not just consumer technology like iPods and the use of Facebook or Twitter; it also shows up in the uncontrolled proliferation of SharePoint sites by business groups or in the use of cloud computing services by application developers,” he added.