In the cybersecurity world, good news is rare. But according to the 2017 Thales Data Threat Report conducted by 451 Research, the world spent more on cybersecurity during the last year than in any other year. Security spending is up—that’s good news for both security vendors and for practitioners struggling with budget constraints.
Security Spending Increases
The research included data from over 1,100 senior security executives from across the globe, including the U.S., U.K., Germany, Japan, Australia, Brazil and Mexico, and key segments such as federal government, retail, finance, and healthcare. Over 73% of respondents anticipate security spending increases in the next 12 months, a sharp increase from 58% last year. The increase is driven primarily by compliance initiatives, but best-practice objectives are also fueling the increased budgets. That’s a good sign, signaling that enterprises are starting to do more than the bare minimum to meet regulatory demands.
Cyberthreat Vulnerability
Unfortunately, despite the increase in cybersecurity spending, more respondents experienced a breach in the last year than ever before, increasing from 21.7% in 2015 to over 26% in 2016. Furthermore, nearly one in three respondents feel their organizations are either ‘very vulnerable’ or ‘extremely vulnerable’ to cyberthreats. The report states somewhat gloomily that “overall, the research suggests that the security industry looks increasingly like a dog chasing its own tail – despite more and more money spent on security each year, our collective problems continue to worsen.”
Legacy Solutions: No Longer Effective
At Lastline, we’ve also seen an overall increase in cybersecurity spending. However, most organizations are spending their increased dollars on the same type of solutions that they implemented in the past. But these legacy solutions are no longer effective at preventing modern breaches. Today’s attackers use new methods that old security systems don’t detect. So, it’s no wonder that the vicious cycle of spending more while still getting breached continues.
Invest in New Technologies
The increase in cybersecurity spending is good news indeed. But to effectively prevent and respond to a data breach, organizations need to invest in new technologies designed to thwart modern threats. To have any hope of avoiding a breach, security teams need to proactively and continuously seek out new and innovative cybersecurity solutions.
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