Security Spending to Lag IT Budget Rebound

Security spending will lag a rebound in information technology budgets in 2010. Microsoft (MSFT) gets some end-point security looks, but not if you have to pay for Forefront. And there’s strong demand for security as a service.

Those are the high-level takeaways from an IT security survey by Citi Investment Research. The survey of 50 chief information security officers, conducted in late January and early February, shows a few interesting cross currents.

First, the spending breakdown. Security spending for 2010 will be largely flat, while IT budgets are expected to rebound roughly 2 percent, according to Citi.

However, Citi analyst Walter Pritchard notes that security spending held up well in the downturn. As a result, there’s little pressure to consolidate the industry via mergers and acquisitions. Here’s a look at the key findings:

• Security execs are sticking with brand names like Cisco (CSCO) and Microsoft—even though those two companies aren’t driving increased spending. The security usage is more about add-on features.
• 26 percent of companies plan to refresh their network security assets.
• End-point security remains a duopoly with McAfee (MFE) and Symantec (SYMC), but Microsoft is making a move. Pritchard was surprised by those results and added that the software giant’s security pricing (free) and the fact some execs may allocate some operating system upgrade spending to the security budget. Meanwhile, the Citi survey found that few security execs were interested in Microsoft’s Forefront Client Security. Only 18 percent of those surveyed are actively using, deploying selectively or testing Forefront.

• And finally 70 percent of respondents are using email security and anti-spam as a service and the majority of execs are looking at on-demand offerings for Web filtering, vulnerability scanning and policy enforcement.

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