Thinking about your security budget for 2015? Spending worldwide for information security is expected to increase to $76.9 billion by next year. Paying attention to trends will help you get a good idea about where all that money will be going.

Cloud computing

We’ve been talking about cloud computing for a while: how to reduce insider threats, how it can help with disaster recovery, how to manage your data on the cloud. Cloud computing was a trend we were looking at last year, and it’s not going anywhere in 2015. Cloud computing is predicted to represent the bulk of IT spend by 2016. Expect ongoing migration of applications to the cloud and personal clouds giving way to more hybrid clouds and then to the multi-cloud which combines private, public and hybrid clouds.

Mobile technology

As mobile technology continues to advance, so do privacy and security concerns. Bring your own device is on the rise and security battles continue. However, more and more companies are investing in remote access tools–Wi-Fi, mobile/wireless devices and mobile device management systems. Providing employees with secure mobile access is becoming a higher priority and devouring larger chunks of security budgets.

Social activity

At this point, it’s pretty clear that online social sharing is not going away. As it becomes more a part of everyday life at home and in the workplace, much more attention has been shifted to social media records, what to keep and how to store them. Social activity is changing the way we work, and it’s changing the way cyber criminals work too. Social engineering may not be something we thought much about 10 years ago, but in 2015, preventing phishing attacks and identity theft is going to take time, energy and budget.

Unscalable models

UMSA President Parick Tatro sees the security industry moving closer to an unscalable model in 2015. He points out that information has value to attackers, but as the organizations spend more and more money to defend that information, the payoff for cyber criminals decreases.

 

These are just a few of the security trends we see eating up IT security budgets in 2015. Where’s your money going?