Enterprises Allocating More IT Dollars on Cybersecurity

The threat landscape and vulnerabilities have changed over the past year because of business disruptions caused by the accelerated rollout of digital initiatives and the shift to a more distributed work environment. That is having an impact on corporate cybersecurity spending, data from Dark Reading's 2021 Strategic Security Survey suggests. Security technologies are the most effective when integrated with the rest of the IT infrastructure and not left as silos. As security leaders think about integration and visibility, some of the spending increases may be coming from other parts of the IT budget, the data shows.

In the survey, 30% of respondents report spending 5% and 10% of their IT dollars on security, which is consistent with past allocation patterns. However, 17% of survey respondents say their organizations allocate between 11% and 15% of the annual IT budget on cybersecurity -- a significant jump from just the 5% that allocated a similar amount in previous years. 

Similarly, the number of respondents reporting they spend more than 25% of their IT dollars on cybersecurity doubled from 4% last year to 8% this year. The data shows that organizations have doubled down on a multilayered approach to securing data and applications against a wide and growing range of threats.