The study, from independent IT research firm TheInfoPro, claims to show that, after a year of restricted budgets, organisations are starting to increase their IT security spending targets once again, as the economies of the cloud start to look enticing.
Infosecurity notes that the report confirms – if confirmation were needed – a recent report by Gartner that predicted 40% of businesses would not have appreciable local IT resources within the next four years, as they will have moved them into the cloud.
And, says the research firm, the stage could be set for a rash of mergers and acquisitions in the IT security industry as a result, with Hewlett-Packard, IBM and other larger vendors ready to move in.
Ivan Ruzic, TheInfoPro's CEO, said that Check Point, McAfee and other similar providers would probably be the largest deals in the acquisition pipeline, each a leader in their respective, mainstream technologies, and each with a loyal customer base.
"Smaller deals would most likely happen first, meaning that Blue Coat, WebSense and ArcSight could be to a larger organisation what 3Com's TippingPoint technology meant to HP", he said.
For its research, TheInfoPro took in responses from more than 250 firms in the Fortune 1000 plus mid-sized US marketplaces, and found that the largest area of concern for enterprises is how to deal with sensitive data both in the public and private cloud environments.
Interestingly, almost three out of four respondents (72%) said they were very concerned or extremely concerned about security in a cloud environment.
"Even with data pointing to a spending rebound, security professionals say they will spend cautiously and scrutinise each priority after many routine infrastructure updates were delayed", said Bill Trussell, the research firm's managing director of security research.
"Emerging trends in virtualisation and cloud are driving much attention toward addressing data loss more aggressively" he added.