With organizations like Bank of America publicly stating that they have an unlimited budget to fight cybercrime, it no surprise in the recent Cybersecurity Market Report by Cybersecurity Ventures they are predicting worldwide spending on cybersecurity to exceed $1 trillion from 2017 to 2021.  

With so many innovations in security technology, how will organizations prioritize their spending in 2017?

Read on and cast your vote on the tools you will be tapping in 2017.

Combating the Full Spectrum of Threats

There are multiple reasons that organizations are rethinking their InfoSec budgets:

• Cyberattacks have become more persistent and sophisticated than ever
• The refocusing of malware from PCs to mobile devices has revealed significant weaknesses
• The ransomware epidemic is escalating
• Cybercriminals are increasingly exploiting the billions of under-protected IoT devices
• The number of “hackers-for-hire” has increased dramatically

Altogether, cyberattacks are expected to cost businesses over $2 trillion by 2019.  

Prioritizing Budgets

Not every organization has the revenue to support an unlimited security budget.  With so many new security solutions on the market today and such a diverse of threats to defend against, it can be difficult to determine how to best allocate the money they do have.  

In a recent survey, the SAN Institute found that the protection of sensitive data, regulatory compliance and reducing incidents and breaches were the main factors driving security spending in 2016.  While that may not seem all that shocking, the breakdown of technology spending provides key insights into how companies hope to achieve those goals:

• Access and authentication (88% of companies spent money on this technology)
• Advanced malware protection (80%)
• Endpoint security (75%)
• DLP/Encryption (70%)
• Wireless security (70%)
• Continuous monitoring (69%)
• Log management (68%)
• Network traffic visibility (67%)
• Vulnerability management (64%)
• Analytics (60%)
• BYOD security (60%)
• SIEM (58%)
• Incident response tools (54%)
• DDoS protection (53%)
• Application security (52%)
• Security intelligence platform (36%)
• Embedded device security or monitoring for IoT (28%)

Interestingly, the companies that participated in this survey identified access and authentication and advanced malware protection as top “big wins” in terms of return on investment.

Improving ROI with a 5% Budget Increase

Regardless of which devices and monitoring tools you plan to purchase in 2017, they will all perform better when they are connected via a network TAP – a purpose built hardware device that ensures that each security appliance deployed sees 100% of the bits, bytes and packets in the traffic streams they are supposed to be analyzing.  

Too often security teams rely on open ports on their network switches (SPAN ports) to feed data to their perimeter defense tools (next-gen firewalls, IDS, anti-malware solutions, etc.)  This may seem like a good idea, however, the minute that traffic volumes spikes, network switches prioritize their primary functions and then fail to send the data to their connected devices.  Clearly, this is a vulnerability that no company can afford.

When budgeting for security projects in 2017, simply add 5% to your project plan to eliminate visibility risks with dedicated network TAP.  Once installed, network TAPs can support additional security appliances and monitoring tools without any loss of traffic data.

 

 

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Are you content to make those investments without ensuring their ability to deliver against expectations?

If you need tips for maximizing ROI on your 2017 InfoSec budget, read our white paper: Planned Visibility: Network Architecture Tips for Supporting Security and Monitoring Tools from the Start.