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Australian infosec spend to hit $1.9B in 2014: Gartner

Australia’s spending on information security is hit to hit almost AU$2 billion in 2014, according to the latest research by Gartner.
Written by Leon Spencer, Contributor

Gartner has forecast that Australia's spending on information security this year will hit AU$1.9 billion, an increase of 13.5 percent over last year, and edge towards AU$2.1 billion in 2015.

The Australian spending forecast comes as the IT research and advisory company predicts that worldwide information security spending will grow by almost 8 percent this year, as enterprises become more "threat-aware".

Gartner estimates that worldwide spending on information security will hit AU$76.3 billion (US$71.1B) in 2014, a 7.9 percent increase on last year's figures, with the data loss prevention segment recording the fastest growth, at 18.9 percent compared to last year.

Meanwhile, Gartner said its research suggests that total information security spending globally will grow a further 8.2 percent next year to AU$82.56 billion (US$76.9B).

Looking further ahead, Gartner said that the use of new security technology and services throughout 2016 will be driven by the increasing adoption of mobile, cloud, social and information — a "nexus of forces", according to Gartner research director Lawrence Pingree.

"This nexus of forces is impacting security in terms of new vulnerabilities," said Pingree. "It is also creating new opportunities to improve effectiveness, particularly as a result of better understanding security threats by using contextual information and other security intelligence."

Pingree said that the bigger trend that emerged in 2013 was the democratisation of security threats, driven by an easy availability of malware and infrastructure that can be used to launch advanced targeted attacks.

"This has led to increased awareness among organisations that would have traditionally treated security as an IT function and a cost centre," he said.

The Gartner research also predicts that more than 30 percent of security controls deployed to the small or midsize business sector will be cloud-based by 2015.

Meanwhile, with regulatory compliance being a major factor driving spending on security over the last three years, particularly in the US — Gartner expects this influence to accelerate from 2014.

Additionally, broader data privacy legislation such as the Australian Privacy Act is expected to sustain spending on security for the rest of this year.

Other examples of intensifying regulatory pressure driving spending on compliance, according to Gartner, include the issue of guidelines regarding personal information protection in China in February 2013 and the planned implementation of an addition to the EU Data Protection Directive.

Other examples include personal data protection laws introduced in 2013 in Singapore and Malaysia.

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