Security Spending Rises As Economy Sinks: Forrester

The bad economy is good news for small and midsized business security budgets, according to a new report from Forrester. And, judging by some of Forrester's findings, the uptick comes just in time.The Forrester report, "The State of SMB Security:2008-2009" projects that small and midsized business security spending will jump to over 10 percent of IT budgets this year, up from just over 9 percent in 2008.

Leading focus for the higher spending will be data security, followed by application security and business continuity/disaster recovery, the report says.

Don't look for increases in dedicated IT security staff, though. The research firm also sees increases in companies looking to vendors for managed security services. both for e-mail and vulnerability assessment.

As far as new (for the business) technologies, close to 20 percent plan to introduce intrusion prevention systems, data encryption (with full disk or file level) and 17 percent are looking to add enpoint application/device controls.

Those numbers are still too low, even for tough times, but they are a sign that when money gets tight at least some businesses are willing to spend on security tools and practices that every business needs.