Infosec spending priorities

In May 2005, Gartner surveyed by telephone 133 U.S.-based organizations, each with revenue
exceeding $750 million.


The survey revealed the following top InfoSec technology spending priorities:

1. Firewalls
2. Intrusion Detection/Prevention
3. Antivirus
4. Network Access Control (Scan and Block)
5. Patch Management
6. Authentication

Internal security/segmentation and reperimiterisation is the likely explanantion for increased firewall spend. I have long maintained in 2004 that IPS would go mainstream in 2005 and this is borne out in the survey. Antivirus is still up there which means there are still a lot of unprotected corporate desktops out there.

Network Access control, took me by surprise at number 4. This is way higher than I expected, but very pleasing indeed. Gartner has long been predicting this market would take off and they must be equally pleased. Given Cisco's lead in this space and Symantecs aquisition of Sygate, they will be equally pleased. Infoexpress is another company that will be smiling here.

Patch management - well thats just understandable isn't it? In fact, given all the noise around passwords and SOX, authentication at #6 is no surprise either.