Managing Security Threats High on Enterprises' Agenda: Forrester

In 2012, organizations allocated about 24 per cent of their overall IT security budget towards network security, and 42 per cent of firms indicated that they expected to increase budget for network security for 2013, reveals a Forrester survey.

The majority of this network security investment is allocated to wireless security and intrusion prevention systems (IPS). In fact, 27 per cent of organizations are planning to invest in the notoriously 'difficult-to-implement' network access control in 2014.

However, investment strategies that put significant focus on these types of conventional technologies will do little to prevent or minimize the impact of targeted attacks, the report adds.

Managing vulnerabilities and threats, it goes on to assert, tops the list of IT security priorities for security decision-makers, with 90 per cent of enterprises saying it is a high or critical priority.

According to Sharda Tickoo, PMM, Trend Micro India, if organizations want to protect intellectual property and shareholder value, they must adopt advanced threat detection and response solutions that identify malicious activity quickly and enable earlier mitigation of targeted attacks.

The lack of focus on security technologies that truly combat targeted attacks is matched by the false sense of security organizations have in their ability to deal with these attacks. A vast majority (77 per cent) of IT security decision-makers are confident in their organization's ability to thwart targeted threats today.

In fact, these decision-makers claim to be almost as adept at defending against targeted attacks, as they are at detecting commodity attacks. Additional Forrester survey data reveals that in the past year, 55 per cent of organizations surveyed claim to have had no compromises or breaches.

In reality, many of these organizations have been compromised but simply don't have the technology available to detect any malicious activity. As a result, enterprises overestimate their abilities, it concludes.