Where will you spend your security dollars? : What's the most important to you in security?

Where will you spend your security dollars?
What's the most important to you in security?
By Sandra Gittlen

Network World, 03/12/03

Security is one of those tough nuts to crack. We know it's your number one concern, yet it comprises so much. From disaster recovery to customer privacy to pure infrastructure protection, security runs the gamut.

Look at any IT spending chart and you'll see security taking an incredibly large share of the pie, but it doesn't tell the whole story.

Where is your IT dollars going? Intrusion detection tools? Is that the most important thing to you right now? Is there pressure from shareholders to prove that you have systems in place to notice any abnormalities or disruptions in your network?

What about intrusion prevention? Rather than just noticing the events happening, what if you could head them off at the pass? Is this where your time and effort are going?

Or are you more concerned about recovering from any disaster that may occur? I know that companies are under the gun to prove that they could be back up and running within minutes, hours or days after a network attack or breakdown. Are you spending your IT dollars on improving your backup and recovery systems? Are you spending your time testing these systems?

Maybe you're putting that money toward VPNs, encryption and firewalling? If so, what types of encryption are you doing? Are you doing site-to-site VPNs or IP VPNs? Are you managing them yourself or handing them off to a service provider? Are you using tools to monitor how the traffic is flowing and what anomalies are occurring?

Are you spending the money on antivirus and antispam tools? How much of your time is taken up with fighting e-mail-borne disturbances? Are you testing the myriad software packages available to combat both problems?

Are there other areas that you are targeting for your security budget? Or do you even feel your network is safe enough?

As we prep our Security Technology Tour (which begins in late May), these are the questions I'm honing in on. Knowing which is your priority right now will help us tailor the content.

Please e-mail your responses to sgittlen@nww.com. Thanks ahead of time for your feedback.

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