How much of IT’s budget goes to security?

For nearly a decade, companies have been devoting a lot of attention — and dollars — to the security of their systems and data. But how much is too much? Or not enough?Recent stats from IT benchmarking firm Computer Economics reveal a trend you probably want to jump on.

The best way to measure how important data security is to an organization: See how much of its IT budget it eats up. When asked how much of a priority security spending was for IT dollars, here’s what your peers said:

• High priority (43%)
• Medium priority (44%)
• Low priority (12%), and
• No priority (1%).

So people are still talking about the importance of security -– but their dollars allotted don’t necessarily match. In the past three years, the percentage of the total IT budget that companies spend on data security has actually decreased.

That doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not walking the talk or leaving their sensitive financial info at risk. The clue: Spending on IT staffing for security hasn’t changed. And that’s probably good news for most companies.

That means that by now, most companies have the spam filters and other hardware and software protections in place. The way to keep advancing the ball on security now is on the people side: getting employees trained on the best protections, having IT stay up-to-date on the latest security threats and protection upgrades, creating security policies and procedures, etc.

It’s a focus shift that can pay off in spades in terms of risk management.