Small- to medium-sized businesses (SMBs) worldwide are
set to spend more than $11.4bn on beefing up their IT security and
infrastructure this year in a bid to thwart increasing electronic
threats.
This spending trend will increase at double digit rates annually
over the next several years, according to the latest study by New
York-based Access Markets International (AMI).
These results were based on surveys of SMBs conducted by AMI in
over 20 countries representing key developed and emerging markets.
In almost all countries, IT security continues to be among the top
concerns for SMBs.
“Over 75% of all medium businesses (100-999 employees) and
almost 60% of the small businesses (1-99 employees) surveyed in the
developed economies indicated that enhancing IT security was very
important for them,” says Anil Miglani, senior vice-president at
AMI-Partners. “The corresponding proportion of businesses [that
consider enhancing IT security to be important] was somewhat lower
in the emerging markets but not by too much.”
Total global SMB spending on IT security is growing rapidly,
driven by the continuing growth in the adoption of several security
products like anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-spyware and
firewalls/VPNs. IT adoption and spending by SMBs has been rising
rapidly in recent years, driven by SMBs’ increasing awareness of
electronic threats, increasing reliance on IT and the growing
volume of business-critical data.