Gartner: Mature organizations can cut security spending

17.07.2006
Organizations that have reached a high level of IT security practice maturity can safely reduce spending to between 3 and 4 percent of the IT budget by 2008, according to research firm Gartner.

By contrast, organizations that are inefficient or have historically under invested in security may spend upwards of 8 percent of their IT budget on security. This means that many organizations will still be investing aggressively for the next few years.

Rich Mogull, research vice president and conference chair of the Gartner IT Security Summit which starts in Sydney Tuesday, said that there are now solutions to most information security problems.

"It's just a matter of implementing the technology efficiently and effectively so resources can be focused on new threats," Mogull said.

"While information security has become a highly specialized branch of IT, commodity security functions are often being returned to IT operations.

"Organizations that are still impacted by everyday, routine threats must ramp up and become more mature in their approach."