In its recently completed survey on IT security maturity, one of the factors that Info-Tech Research Group considered was IT security spending. This note evaluates the spending patterns, as well as the perceived adequacy of that spending, among the Financial Services survey respondents as compared to the response pool as a whole. Not surprisingly, spending and satisfaction with the spending level is higher on average for financial institutions.
Financial Services Spending More on Security…
Survey respondents were asked to quantify their IT security spending as a percentage of their overall IT budget. On average, businesses in the Financial Services sector were determined to be spending approximately 4.7% of their total IT budget on IT security, while the average across all sectors was only 3.9%. Though 0.8% may seem an inconsequential figure, the average IT budget of survey respondents amounted to more than $50M and so that slight percentage represents approximately an additional $400,000 spending on IT security per annum.
