Forrester: SMB security spending to increase in 2009

By Linda Tucci | Jan 9, 2009

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IT executives at small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) will spend a full percentage point more of their IT budgets on security in 2009 than 2008, according to a new study from Forrester Research. The change will result from a shift in security strategy from computer security threat defense to corporate data protection.

That more closely mirrors the strategy at large companies, says Forrester's The State of SMB Security: 2008-2009. For SMBs, which Forrester defines as companies with fewer than 1,000 employees, that means 10.1% of their IT spending will go toward IT security in 2009, compared with 9.1% in 2008.

"What was interesting in this survey was how similar the SMBs were to enterprises, in terms of their issues and objectives and even the pressures they are facing in finding people with the right skills," said Jonathan Penn, vice president, tech industry strategy -- security, at Cambridge, Mass.-based Forrester and author of the report.

Nearly 20% of the respondents plan to pilot or adopt a host intrusion prevention system (HIPS), file-level encryption, full disk/desktop encryption, endpoint control and data leak prevention in the next 12 months. The moves will almost double the use of these security technologies at SMBs.

Indeed, protecting the data assets of the business was the highest priority for both SMBs and enterprise companies, surpassing threats frequently cited in the past, like malware (ranked 5th of 11 security issues) and regulatory compliance (ranked 10th).

The No. 2 concern for both SMBs and enterprises was application security. It is perhaps not surprising that big companies with dedicated security staffs understand that application protection is an important component of managing risk, Penn said. The fact that the multitasking IT staffs at most SMBs not only share this concern but can also communicate it to upper management represents a shift in their approach to managing risk.

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