The university is investigating products that combine personal firewalls, antivirus and antispyware capabilities as part of a bid to reduce the number of security products deployed on desktops, he said

"I think we would realize some cost benefits from such products and it will give us a single point of contact" for support, he said. However, the approach will also mean "putting all our eggs in one basket and relying on one vendor" for crucial security defenses, he said.

Marty Wake, senior vice president of IT at Mercantile Safe Deposit & Trust Co. in Baltimore, said he expects more integrated security suites to emerge from vendors as the tools become commonplace and mature. In fact, he predicted that enterprise class antivirus, antispam and antispyware capabilities will soon be "built in as giveaways" in broader security suites.

In addition, as operating systems and applications become more secure and service providers integrate security into their services, expect to see a consolidation among security tool vendors, he said. As a result, at least some products that companies pay for now will be available at lower costs or even for free, he predicted. "I think we will be able to spend less money on security products" in the future, he said.

Microsoft Corp.'s growing presence in the security market is pushing a lot of this change, MacDonald said. Even if enterprises don't start broadly using Microsoft's security products anytime soon, their presence in the market will force other vendors to cut prices to compete, he said.