Organisations are spending as much as 20 per cent of their IT budgets on security, according to a new survey.

A poll of 1,070 organisations commissioned by the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA) found that spending on information security has increased markedly over recent years and shows no signs of letting up.

Spending on security technology, training, assessments, and certification accounted for one-fifth of total technology budgets in 2006, up from 15 per cent in 2005, and 12 per cent in 2004.

Even taking into account increased spending on security to meet tougher compliance regimes, CompTIA figures are much higher than those of other security watchers. Gartner, for example, predicts that security spending will rise to 9.3 per cent in 2007.

Security pros looking at the CompTIA figures would be well advised to keep the champagne on ice. They'd be better employed working out a convincing line for how new security technologies support overall business objectives.

But we digress.

Nearly half of the survey respondents said they plan to increase spending on security-related technologies this year. One-third expect to increase spending on security training.

The survey, carried out by analysts TNS on behalf of CompTIA, also discovered that for every dollar spent on security about 42 cents goes on technology product purchases, 17 cents for security-related processes, 15 cents for training, 12 cents for assessments, nine cents for certification, and the balance on other costs.

Anti-virus software, firewalls, and proxy servers continue to be used by nearly all organisations. The past two years have witnessed wider use of intrusion detection systems, physical access control, and multi-factor authentication, the survey found. ®