Following last year's widespread cost-cutting initiatives due to the global economic downturn, technology, media and telecommunications organisations are starting to reinvest in information security.
According to a new Deloitte report, Bounce Back: 2010 Global Security Survey, 10 per cent of TMT organisations increased their information security budget by more than 10 per cent over the last 12 months, while more than one-third (36 per cent) increased their budgets up to 10 per cent. The question is whether these budget increases will make up for the ground lost during the economic downturn.
"At a time when almost half (46 per cent) of TMT organisations believe inadequate security budgets are the biggest barrier to information security, we are pleased to see many TMT organisations around the world increase their investment in information security in anticipation of an economic recovery," said Jacques Buith, partner and security expert, Deloitte.
Cyber crime a serious global concern and major barrier to ensuring information security.
More than one-third (37 per cent) of organisations surveyed said the increasing sophistication of threats is the second largest major barrier to ensuring effective information security.
"The problem is no longer about computer savvy individuals trying to hack into IT systems. The growing professionalisation of cyber criminals and cyber terrorists has led many governments to appoint national cyber coordinators to protect themselves against cyber warfare," said Mr Buith.
"As a result, TMT organisations find themselves both as high profile targets and as the infrastructure and/or service provider that enables cyber crime and cyber warfare to occur."
More than half of TMT organisations have experienced a security breach in 2010.
Since TMT organisations are increasingly creating and distributing content digitally, new opportunities for piracy, cheating and abuse abound. The study shows that half of TMT organisations have experienced at least one security breach in 2010 and 26 per cent of TMT organisations experienced repeated attacks by malicious software from outside the organisation.
Online games and gambling are extremely vulnerable to security attacks since manipulating and cheating can easily occur. In addition, online advertisers are being defrauded by click-farms: groups of people paid to click on ads. As a result, ad costs per click are on the rise.
"Despite the lack of testing and verification, only one-third (30 per cent) of TMT organisations have a 'high confidence' in their third parties," said Mr Buith. This is a problem for cloud computing as organisations implicitly rely on third parties to provide infrastructure, applications and data hosting out of the cloud.
TMT organisations indicated that identity and access management were among their top three most important information security initiatives for 2010 - up from number seven last year.
Now that the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) market has started to recover, information security practices are being factored into the market valuation of TMT organisations. Since most acquisitions include the entire IT environment, an acquired company's IT systems will likely need to be improved and integrated to reach the same level of security, privacy and continuity as the company purchasing it.