Follow the Money... Please!

Information security is getting more money, but exactly how much and from where isnt always clear. Its more evidence of a lack of strategic direction.

By CSO Contributor

October 01, 2005 — CSO — Information security is getting more money, but exactly how much and from where isn't always clear. It's more evidence of a lack of strategic direction.

In previous years when we asked what your information security budget was, we didn't include "don't know" as an option. This year, we did, and Bang! A full one-fifth (22 percent) of the information executives responding said they didn't know how much money their companies budget for infosecurity. More signs of a lack of proactive, strategic focus. Not good.

Good news: The information security function can shake some money out of other departments' pockets to supplement its own appropriations.

The larger companies are most guilty of not tracking their spending well. About 40 percent of the 1,700 companies with $5 billion in revenue or more said they didn't know their information security budget. Bigger companies, with more divisions and probably a more distributed world view, might have a harder time pinning down all the monies devoted to information security. In fact, the bigger companies reported much higher usage of money from other departments for security than smaller companies did. Many bigger companies also have integrated information and physical security, making their information security budget a less distinct entity.

We didn't report the spending trends herewhether budgets were increasing, decreasing or staying the samebecause for the third straight year those numbers stayed relatively constant. Except for one telling tidbit: We added "dont know" to the question of whether or not budgets will increase, stay the same or decrease, and 16 percent said they weren't sure which way their budgets were headed.

Read more about data protection in CSOonline's Data Protection section.

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