IBM: The rapidly changing role of top security executives

04.05.2012
issues are exerting a ton of pressure and monetary concerns on the executives in charge of keeping and .

Those were some of the conclusions in a study of 138 security executives done by IBM and its Center for Applied Insights which also found that rather than just reactively responding to , the Chief Information Security Executives (CISOs) role is shifting more toward intelligent and holistic risk management -- from fire-fighting to anticipating and mitigating fires before they start.

IN THE NEWS:

"Overall, all security leaders today are under intense pressure, charged with protecting some of their firm's most valuable assets - money, customer data, intellectual property and brand. Nearly two-thirds of CISOs surveyed say their senior executives are paying more attention to security today than they were two years ago, with a series of high-profile hacking and data breaches convincing them of the key role that security has to play in the modern enterprise. More than half of respondents cited mobile security as a primary technology concern over the next two years," the study found.

"Nearly two-thirds of respondents expect information security spend to increase over the next two years and of those, 87% expect double-digit increases," IBM said.

Some other interesting findings from the "" report: