IT Security Budget – Impact of Financial Crisis

According to the 2009 Rotman-TELUS Joint Study on Canadian IT Security Practices the financial crisis has had a negative impact on IT security budgets.

The 2009 subprime mortgage crisis was prompted by a striking rise in mortgage foreclosures in the United States, with major adverse effects for banks and financial markets around the globe.

Regarding security budgets being affected by the global crisis, 75% of responding organizations reacted by applying budgetary cuts to their security expenditures, while 25% actually increased their security investment.  50% of the respondents reported minor adjustments where only 10% or less of their budget was affected (most of them adjusting downward). 20% reported moderate cuts of 10%-25%, and less than 10% applied severe cuts of 50% or more.

A detailed analysis of the reactions showed that Average Budgetary Impact was a 4.6% budgetary cut in IT security expenditures in the Government sector, a 6.6% budgetary cut in the Private sector, and a 10.8% budgetary cut in the Public sector (from Table 17).

The 2009 report has IT security metrics on:

• Application Security
• IT Security Budgets
• IT Governance
• IT Security Breaches
• Security Technologies

Proceed here for a full copy of the Joint Study on Canadian IT Security Practices .

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IT Benchmark Spreadsheets

ServiceXen, an IT firm located in Atlanta, Georgia, has provided six (6) interactive spreadsheets to assist in IT benchmarking activities.  Each spreadsheet is a shared Zoho Sheet.  See below:

1. Data Center Security Audit
2. New Employee Cost Calculator
3. Server Buy vs. Lease Calculator
4. Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) Calculator
5. Virtualization Fit Tool

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Benchmark – security breaches

in financial and tech services, almost 40 percent of  security breaches came from the inside, much more than in other groups.

Source:‘Data Breach Target: Your Company’, CIO Magazine, October 6, 2008.

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