Cloud security spending increased for half of US companies in 2016

Cloud security spending increased for 48 percent of the companies in the past year, while the IT security budget for other security activities remained the same, as shown in a Bitdefender survey of more than 500 IT decision makers.

While almost two-thirds of IT decision makers say the security budget is sufficient, the rest would need a future increase of 34 percent, on average, to deliver efficient IT security policies. This is mainly because migrating information from traditional data centers to a cloud infrastructure has significantly increased companies’ attackable surface, bringing new threats and more worries to CIO offices regarding the safety of their data.

Large companies that have invested heavily in on-premise architectures and migrated data to the cloud will be the biggest ambassadors of the hybrid model.

From the total base of the IT decision makers, they say only 64 percent of cyberattacks can be stopped, detected or prevented with the current resources, on average.

Bitdefender’s survey shows 34 percent of companies were breached in the past 12 months, while 74 percent of IT decision makers don’t know how the company was breached.

Two-thirds of US companies would pay an average of $124k to avoid public shaming scandals after a breach. Some 14 percent would pay more than $500k.

Methodology

This survey was conducted in October 2016 by iSense Solutions for Bitdefender on 250 IT security purchase professionals (CIOs/CEOs/ CISOs – 26 percent, IT managers/directors – 56 percent, IT system administrators – 10 percent, IT support specialists – 5 percent, and others), from enterprises with 1,000+ PCs based in the United States of America.

More than half of the organizations surveyed are from the IT hardware and software / electronic and electrical engineering industries, while 24 percent are from manufacturing, 6 percent from transportation, 4 percent are providers of telecommunication services, 4 percent are utility or public services companies, and the rest come from construction, retail, distribution, media or other industries.

Some 62 percent of the organizations surveyed have over 3,000 employees, 14 percent between 2,000 and 2,999, and 24 percent between 1,000 and 1,999. Regarding IT infrastructure development in the organizations, 39 percent of the companies have 3,000+ computers, 21 percent between 2,000 and 2,999, and 40 percent between 1,000 and 1,999.