54% of firms will increase their cyber-security budgets in 2019
.jpg)
Over half of all organisations will increase their cyber-security spending this year, with almost a third of them planning to boost their cyber-security budgets by 10 to 20 percent, eSecurity Planet's 2019 State of IT Security survey has found.
The detailed survey of CEOs, CIOs and IT security professionals at a large number of organisations of all sizes also noted that over half of all organisations (57 percent) are also planning to hire additional IT security professionals this year. The renewed spending on cyber-security has been driven mostly by the fear of data breaches and the arrival of new privacy regulations such as GDPR.
Michael Kerner, a senior security editor for eSecurity Planet, said that the responses to the survey indicate that organisations are responding to the challenges and are not idly sitting by waiting for the next breach. According to the report, in order to counter increasingly sophisticated attacks and protect data from breaches that could lead to steep fines under the EU's GDPR, organisations have begun purchasing security products in large numbers.
CEOs, CIOs and security professionals interviewed by eSecurity Planet said that while IT services companies are looking to buy the latest web gateways, network access control, DLP, deception technology, UEBA, phishing simulation and patch management solutions, leading business services firms are going for DLP, SIEM and DDoS protection solutions.
While one in four CEOs, CIOs, and security professionals at organisations trust network access controls the most, 24.2 percent of them are planning to deploy DNS filtering solutions, 20.8 percent are planning to deploy antivirus solutions and another 20 percent are planning to deploy web gateways.
However, many organisations are also shunning some security solutions as they believe such solutions are ineffective against emerging cyber-threats. While one in four IT security professionals do not trust phishing simulation products, 20 percent are unconvinced about the effectiveness of breach and attack simulation (BAS) technology.
The report also noted that while two-thirds of organisations are conducting penetration testing at least once a year, another 60 percent are also conducting threat-hunting exercises annually to prepare for cyber-attacks. They are doing so to address their concerns about database security, advanced persistent threats (APTs), DDoS attacks, insider threats and ransomware.
Even though it is encouraging to note that over half of organisations are willing to invest their money in securing and protecting customer data, almost 70 percent of organisations that are hiking their budgets are mid-sized or large organisations, indicating that a vast majority of small businesses that process customer data are either unwilling or unable to increase their cyber-security budgets or hire additional IT security personnel.
Security Planet also noted that of those organisations that will be unable to increase their cyber-security budgets this year, 62 percent are companies that employ fewer than 100 staff.
Commenting on the survey's findings, Ilia Kolochenko, CEO of High-Tech Bridge, told SC Media UK that spending more does not necessarily means spending better as doing so lures organisations into a false sense of security considering that many organisations still do not have a risk-based, long-term cyber-security strategy to allocate necessary resources and authority within the security team in a consistent and coherent manner.
"Few organisations have an up-to-date and comprehensive inventory of their digital assets, leaving many systems and applications without maintenance or updates. The problem is aggravated by IoT proliferation, BYOD, cloud and data sharing with third-parties. Ultimately, today very few organisations have a holistic control over their data.
"They increasingly spend more, but often the increase is spent on general expansion of IT infrastructure (eg, they need more or upgraded licenses from the same vendors), rather than the higher priority of cyber-security in their corporate risk mitigation plan.
He added that scared by exorbitant FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) in the media and from some vendors, organisations’ desultory spend on various consultants to attain paper-based compliance often ignore practical aspects of security. They distract their security personnel from more important tasks thereby skyrocketing their susceptibility to data breaches.
"Eventually, cyber-security professionals start suffering from burnout and their productivity falls. I believe that with a proper cyber-security strategy, most organisations will not only manage to handle their cyber-security without new hires, but will manage to cut [unnecessary] cyber-security spending," he added.

Latest Jobs
-
- Contract (outside) Cyber Incident manager – current SC clearance ESSENTIAL
- United Kingdom
- N/A
-
Contract (outside) Cyber Incident manager – current SC clearance ESSENTIAL Outside IR35 Client facing (Remote UK) with occasional site visit. Must have current Cyber incident response / management experience. Both proactive planning, escalation, coordination and coordinating response. Stakeholder engagement both technical and non technical teams. Prior experience with Technical incident / digital forensics / crisis management. Immediate role.
-
- Tenable Vulnerability Analyst - CONTRACT outside IR35. SC cleared.
- United Kingdom
- N/A
-
6 month rolling contract Outside IR35- immediate start. Threat and Vulnerability Analyst. Tenable.sc experience needed. The ability to deploy agent, configure environments, run active and passive scans, produce reports and prioritise remediation activities based on output Current and ACTIVE SC clearance is required
-
- ForgeRock Consultant
- N/A
- £600 per day
-
ForgeRock Consultant required for 6 Month Contract (with potential to extend) Outside IR35, Must be willing to work Europe hours (GMT+1) This is a remote position, Looking for a lead ForgeRock Technical Consultant with strong experience of ForgeRock to lead the next phase of deployment. Good understanding of ForgeRock Directory Services. · Responsible for the design and implementation of ForgeRock stack · Install and configure ForgeRock stack to meet customer authentication and authorization requirements, · Design and implement OAuth2 protocol using ForgeRock OpenAM, · Design and develop OpenAM custom authentication modules, · Configure ForgeRock stack to protect RESTful API, · Troubleshoot and support ForgeRock IAM stack. · Designed and developed Restful APIs, This is a great project with an expanding ForgeRock Partner, where you will get to work on some high level deployment projects We are looking for someone with the above experience, who is comfortable hitting the ground running and taking on the reins mid project
-
- Network Security Engineer
- Germany
- €550 a day
-
German- based contract opportunity This is an onsite based position, we would need the Network Security engineer to be able to work on the client site 5 days a week Seeking an experienced Network Security Engineer for a leading technology company. Strong expertise in firewall/IPS solutions, proxy solutions, and certificate management is required. Good hands-on experience in networking and web-related technologies necessary. Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to work under pressure are essential. we are looking for a Network Security Engineer with the following experience: · Expertise in Administration, Management & Troubleshooting of Firewall / IPS solutions / Proxy solutions/Certificate Management Solutions · Good Hands-on Experience on security devices (PaloAlto/ /McAfee Proxy/CISCO ISE/Certificate Management) · Good Hands-on Experience in Networking with skills of switching, routing & wireless Technologies · Familiarity with web related technologies (Web applications, Web Services, Service Oriented Architectures) and of network/web related protocol · Configuration of NAT / PAT, firewall policies, profiling, objects, AD-Integration, backup – restore · Knowledge of Subnetting TCP/IP Communication, VLSM Configuration of VLAN VTP · Configuration of Routing Protocols e.g. RIPv1 & v2, OSPF, EIGRP, BGP Knowledge of standard and extended ACL 12 month contract