Many companies still not PCI-compliant: survey

MUMBAI, INDIA: PCI data security standards may be a hot topic, but a recent survey by Gartner, Inc. found that 18 percent of respondents admitted to not being PCI-compliant, even though the survey data suggested that they should be.

Gartner conducted a series of kiosk-based surveys between June and September of this year at Gartner's annual IT Security Summits and Catalyst events in North America and its Security & Risk Summit in EMEA. The surveys of 383 IT managers found trends in buying behaviors and permitted predictions of future security spending.

"Given that many of the technology providers in the security market target their products and help with PCI-related compliance initiatives, it came as something of a surprise that such a high percentage of survey respondents said that they were not PCI-compliant," said Lawrence Pingree, research director at Gartner. "Technology and service providers should continue to market their ability to help solve customer issues with compliance for the PCI security standards. End-user organizations must also work to address the awareness of their PCI security standards compliance status, so that their employees know whether or not they are compliant with the PCI standards."

Pingree said that change is the key theme to the budget survey. Last year, 55 percent of those surveyed said their budgets would stay the same for next year; however, this year only 30 percent confirmed this. Furthermore, 33 percent of respondents expected growth in their budgets, with 22 percent expecting a 5 percent or more IT budget increase compared with 20 percent last year, meaning there has been a slight increase in the overall spending for security. This is despite the fact that 15 percent of this year's respondents said they expect a budget decrease; last year 9 percent predicted a decrease in their overall IT budget.

Additional details are in the Gartner report "User Survey Analysis: 2012 Security Buying Behaviors and Budget Trends" which is available on Gartner's website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=1860015.