The Forrester Research report – titled `The Evolution Of IT Security, 2010 To 2011' and authored by Jonathan Penn and Heidi Shey – says that IT security will remain a hotbed of activity and growth in 2011 as firms grapple with a more menacing, capable threat landscape, respond to a growing body of regulation and third-party requirements, and adapt to an unprecedented level of IT upheaval.
The study, which took in responses form more than 2,000 enterprise and SMB IT security decision-makers in North American and Europe, also found that, despite a market emphasis on application security, the area is now a significantly lower priority now than it was in 2008.
Most security organisations, says Forrester, continue to focus inappropriate attention on network vulnerabilities and reactive network security tools rather than on proactive application security practices.
The report's findings also show that both enterprises and SMBs are increasingly turning to managed security services (MSS) and software-as-a-service (SaaS) based security solutions.
Delving into the study reveals that the prediction is for security outsourcing to go mainstream as more firms look to service providers to help them with the overwhelming complexity of the threat landscape.
According to the report, "large IT firms are weaving security more tightly into their IT portfolios; network service providers and cloud providers are embedding security into their services."
In addition, Forrester says that defence/intelligence firms are strongly positioning to capitalise on rising cybersecurity concerns.
All these changes, says the report, mean that 2011 will be a key inflection point for the IT security market.