News

Study: IT Delayed After 9/11, But Will Still Make Major Security Purchases

• By Scott Bekker
• October 30, 2002

It was popular wisdom after the terrorist attacks of September 2001 that Corporate America would wake up to its vulnerability and quickly spend additional billions on security and business continuity solutions, products and services.

Officials at most security software firms will tell you their revenues and profits are up, but the mass rush for security-related products and services hasn't happened.

In a report released this week, research firm IDC, provides results of its own surveys of IT professionals along with market analysis to conclude that the spending was delayed but that a huge wave of corporate spending on security and business continuity solutions will still occur.

"Corporate buyers were confronted with a difficult situation -- their understanding of the security need was high but their ability to quantify the risk of a security threat was low," IDC chief research officer John Gantz said in a statement. "This uncertainty about the risk caused many companies to delay their purchase decisions. The result was a gap between the need for security and corporate investments in security solutions."

IDC projects that corporate spending for IT security will more than double from $66 billion in 2001 to $155 billion in 2006. In 2002, IDC expects that spending to reach $80 billion. The research firm projects that spending will be evenly split among infrastructure, information security and business continuity, although business continuity products and services will account for a slightly larger part of the market.

IDC conducted a survey of almost 1,000 IT managers in July. Forty percent of the respondents rated security as their highest priority.