Growing security concerns are boosting spending on IT security in India with the overall spend in 2016 to touch 1.12 billion, up 10 per cent from $1.01 billion in 2015, according to Gartner.

Security spending is expected to grow over 10 per cent CAGR to reach $1.67 billion by 2020, Gartner said. Security services (that includes consulting, implementation, support and managed security services) revenue accounted for 61 per cent of this total revenue in 2015, and this proportion will increase to 66 per cent by 2020.

“Most Indian enterprises that have recently been hacked were hacked using vulnerabilities that were known for several months and in cases up to a year. This shows that enterprises in India are not well-equipped with IT security and thus there is a greater need to address these areas,” said Siddharth Deshpande, principal research analyst at Gartner.

“The good news is that in the last one year, we've not only seen newer enterprises starting to spend on IT security, but also the spending per customer has gone up,” said Deshpande.

Major initiatives

Key security initiatives for a majority of organizations in 2016 include: security operations, incident response network and data center security, identity governance and administration, mobile and cloud security governance, advanced threat defense, application security, security policy and program development and governance, risk and compliance (GRC).

Mature organizations that have begun the journey towards detection and response approaches are now looking to focus on advanced capabilities around security operations and incident response. Several organizations in India are now realising that a purely technology centric approach to their security strategy will not suffice. As a result many organizations are beginning to pay equal emphasis on the people and process elements. In the context of digital business, the people and process elements of security and risk management are becoming extremely important.

“Digital business challenges the basic principles of information risk and security management,” said Deshpande. “Digital business moves at a faster pace than traditional business, and traditional security approaches designed for maximum control will no longer work in the new era of digital innovation. Risk and security leaders must understand the risks associated with business unit innovation, and balance the imperative to protect the enterprise with the need to adopt innovative technology approaches.”

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