Encryption top IT security initiative in 2009

IT security budgets are increasing in 2009 to consume 12.6% of the entire IT operating budget, up from 11.7% in 2008, according to Forrester Research's survey of 942 IT and security managers in North America and Europe.
Staffing and upgrades to existing security technology are taking up over half of the IT security budgets overall, according to Forrester's report, "The State of Enterprise IT Security: 2008 to 2009". The survey also shows 20% of the available IT security funding this year is expected to go to security outsourcing, consultants and managed services, with another 18.5% targeting new security initiatives.

Full-disk encryption was cited as the top client security technology to be piloted or adopted this year, along with file-level encryption. About a fifth of the organisations also said they expect to pilot or adopt data-leak prevention during the next twelve months, though there appears to be less interest in desktop DLP than network-based DLP.