SC Magazine survey: Guarding against a data breach

Budgets will be tight in 2012, but two-thirds of respondents to our fifth annual data breach survey believe they've got security covered. Illena Armstrong reports.

To evolve is to survive. It is a familiar scientific concept that can be encountered just as easily in business conversations over the water cooler as it can be in classic pieces of literature.

Its place in the information security industry is about as surprising as the enduringly humble budgets that still beleaguer most IT security departments. Despite these flat or, in some cases, still declining funds, evolving to survive and perhaps even prosper through modest profit growth remains a driving force for most organizations.

However, it also is a major motivator for others. As if in salute to this Darwinian supposition, regulators and, of course, cyber criminals continue to modify their plays to advance their own causes even further.

As uncovered in SC Magazine's fifth annual “Guarding Against a Data Breach” survey, IT security leaders and their executive bosses, meanwhile, are pushing ahead to take on a 2012 that promises still more of the advanced cyber attacks they saw last year, an increase in audits by compliance watchdogs, and a continuation of end-users and consumers relying on an array of vulnerable technologies to conduct business.

And all these things are happening just as most economic forecasters predict a drearier year than even they had imagined only a few months ago. A recent Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia survey reveals that the 45 forecasters queried only expect a 2.4 percent jump of GDP growth this year versus an earlier figure of 2.6 percent. The unemployment growth rate also became less rosy in a matter of months, falling from a previous estimate of 8.8 percent to 8.6 percent.