Anthem Inc. JPMorgan Chase. Home Depot. Recent data breaches at these organizations, which affected millions of customers and disclosed sensitive information, show that all companies need to make cybersecurity a priority.
Increase in Cybersecurity Spending
This concerning trend is contributing to a growing increase in cybersecurity spending, according to Gartner Inc., an information technology research and advisory company. Worldwide spending on information security reached an estimated $71.1 billion in 2014, a 7.9 percent increase over 2013, Gartner says. In 2015, total information security spending will grow a further 8.2 percent, reaching $76.9 billion, according to the research firm.
And the increasing adoption of mobile, cloud and social networking among organizations will help drive the use of new security technology and services into 2016, Gartner says.
Democratization of Security Threats
One worrisome development that has emerged over recent years is the democratization of security threats, driven by the easy availability of malicious software and infrastructure that can be used to launch sophisticated attacks, says Lawrence Pingree, a researcher director at Gartner. “This has led to increased awareness among organizations that would have traditionally treated security as an IT function and a cost center,” he says.
It’s important to note that it’s not just the private sector that’s taking the threat of cyber-attacks seriously. The U.S. government is also placing a significant amount of resources behind its efforts to curb devastating cyber incidents. In February, President Barack Obama proposed $14 billion for cybersecurity in his 2016 budget proposal, Reuters reported at the time.
“Cyber threats targeting the private sector, critical infrastructure and the federal government demonstrate that no sector, network or system is immune to infiltration by those seeking to steal commercial or government secrets and property or perpetrate malicious and disruptive activity,” the White House said.
What are Organizations Focusing Spending Efforts on?
So what are organizations focusing their spending efforts on? Research and market intelligence firm Cybersecurity Ventures, in its market report for Q2 2015, identified that security teams’ biggest increases in spending will revolve around mobile technology, cloud and virtualization, data leakage and identity and access management, citing data from Ernst & Young’s 2014 Global Information Security Survey.
Stay Vigilant.
Moving forward, cybersecurity will continue to be a concern for organizations, so it’s important that they don’t stand idly by while matters grow worse. “We have to be vigilant,” JPMorgan Chase Chairman CEO James Dimon said during a 2014 Institute of International Finance panel discussion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The comments came after Chase suffered a data breach that impacted the personal information of 76 million households and seven million small businesses. Cyber issues “will happen for a long time,” Dimon said.
If cybersecurity is on your radar as an organization—good. It should be. The security experts at ADAPTURE are available for high-level firewall penetration testing and consulting on security best practices.
