Forrester: - Making Leaders Successful Every Day

Information security spending has had its ups and downs in the past, but most CISOs are finding it hard to deal with the recent downward trend in security spending. In a recent Forrester survey, CIOs from North America and Europe said they will spend 7.75% of their IT budgets on security compared with 8.92% last year. However, this not an indication of security's declining importance in the organizations: 63% of the respondents also said that upgrading the security infrastructure was a priority or critical priority for 2006. Today, CISOs are struggling to quantify and justify the benefits of security spending at a time when management expectations are increasing. To cope, security managers need to revisit their spending habits and endeavor to spend proportionately on people, process, and technology. They must also understand that compliance may not always equal security.