Security Budgets Going Up, Thanks To Mega-Breaches

Sixty percent of organizations have increased their security spending by one-third -- but many security managers still don't think that's enough, Ponemon study finds.

Mega-breaches like those at Target and Sony are good for one thing: they help security departments get greater buy-in and bigger budgets from the powers that be. In the wake of the Target breach, 61 percent of organizations increased their security budgets by an average of 34 percent in 2014, according to a study released today, conducted by the Ponemon Institute on behalf of Identity Finder, LLC.

Nevertheless, only 67 percent of respondents said that their organizations gave them sufficient budget to defend against data breaches, even after the Target incident -- which, respondents say upped their upper management's concern about breaches from a 5.7 to a 7.8 on a scale of 1 to 10.