Where there is light, there is also shadow: Continuously growing investments in IT security can turn into cost traps. A current study by Ivanti shows that budgets for IT security will also rise significantly in some cases in the coming months.
The reason is that companies continue to work to adapt to the challenge of an Everywhere Workplace. The danger here: The flood of tasks to safeguard a decentralized workforce can tend to lead to IT security costs getting out of hand. 400 Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) across the EMEA region were interviewed for the study. The investigation looked, among other things, into the question of how the nationwide move to the home office will affect the budgets of the security teams in the future.
81% of CISOs expect increasing budgets
The study found that the average IT security budget last year was over 64 million euros per company. 81% of the CISOs surveyed expect this amount to increase in the next 12 months. One in four (27%) even predicts a significant increase. Almost all CISOs (92%) identified a primary budget driver: the need to implement additional security measures to better support and secure employees who work from anywhere. In Germany, this value was at the same level at 91%. Four out of five (80%, in Germany 78%) of the CISOs also pointed out the need to replace passwords with more secure forms of authentication.
Very popular: Unified Endpoint Management & Biometrics
When asked which software solutions they want to invest in in the next year, Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) and biometric authentication solutions came first. German CISOs spent almost half (47%) of their total budget on IT security (EMEA: 41%) in the last year on UEM software. Interesting here: 75% also expect that investments in special UEM software will increase in the next year. The primary purpose of this surge in investment is to manage and secure a massively growing number of devices attempting to access corporate resources.
Organizations are increasingly relying on biometric authentication to enable remote access to business data. Seven out of ten CISOs from Germany (69%; EMEA: 70%) took this view, with a fifth (18%) even forecasting a significant increase. The increased focus on biometric authentication is apparently a consequence of the significant increase in phishing attacks in recent months.
75% of companies have already experienced phishing attacks
According to Verizon's 2020 Data Breach Investigations Report, only 2019% of all corporate attacks were phishing in 22. In 2020, 75% of companies worldwide had some type of phishing attack. Credentials, including passwords, are the most common data compromised by phishing attacks. By adopting biometric authentication using mobile devices, companies can eliminate the main point of attack for phishing attacks. When asked how their investments in biometric authentication solutions will change compared to last year, 69% of respondents from Germany forecast an increase and 23% even a strong increase.
Everywhere Workplace leads to the proliferation of remote devices
“The Everywhere Workplace has resulted in an explosion of remote devices trying to gain access to corporate resources. This new decentralized work landscape poses problems for CISOs as the growth in devices offers cybercriminals numerous new opportunities for attack, ”explains Nigel Seddon, VP EMEA West at Ivanti. “CISOs need to ensure that they have full visibility into all devices attempting to access their corporate network. Then it is important to manage and secure these devices in the best possible way. There is a great risk that IT security budgets will get out of hand. To better manage IT and software spending, CISOs should consider using spend intelligence technologies. "
Spend intelligence technologies can help
Spend Intelligence provides insights into software landscapes and spending for applications across all IT environments. It improves the operational speed and the transparency of assets. Above all, costs can be effectively reduced. A combination with a zero trust approach is ideal. All types of digital assets, from cloud systems to IoT end devices, can be effectively secured. Before a zero trust system grants access to resources, all objects involved are verified; biometric authentication, which is very convenient for users, is used to authenticate the user. Companies create a stronger security standard, improve the user experience, control IT security spending and take the pressure off help desks to optimize IT environments.
Ivanti's EMEA CISO Survey: How the Pandemic Has Changed CISOs' Priorities study is free to download.
Go directly to the study at Ivanti.de
About Ivanti The strength of unified IT. Ivanti connects IT with security operations in the company in order to better control and secure the digital workplace. We identify IT assets on PCs, mobile devices, virtualized infrastructures or in the data center - regardless of whether they are hidden on-premise or in the cloud. Ivanti improves the provision of IT services and reduces risks in the company on the basis of specialist knowledge and automated processes. By using modern technologies in the warehouse and across the entire supply chain, Ivanti helps companies improve their ability to deliver - without changing the backend systems.