Security is proving a durable market in the current economic climate, with a survey of over 1,000 IT managers by Infosecurity Europe finding that 55% are planning to increase their spending relative to last year.

A further 34% will be spending the same amount on security projects during 2009, with only 2% expecting significant reductions in security budgets of more than 5%.
This contrasts dramatically with overall IT spending: only a fifth of respondents expected that be higher at their organisation this year.

“Even though overall IT budgets may be reduced and the economic crisis continues to deepen, spending on information security will continue to grow driven by the increase in security threats,” says IDC analyst Eric Domage, adding that “many organisations are still in catch-up mode. [In particular, many] mobile and remote access users are still poorly protected against very agile threats.”

The increased spending could also be based on a sense of what is to come: 90% of organisations said they expected the number of security breaches to increase in 2009.