April 2008 — News
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Information Security Set for Explosive Growth
Driven by compliance and public confidence issues, information security is expected to expand dramatically over the next few years, according to new research released by Frost & Sullivan and (ISC)². Worldwide, the number of information security professionals will grow from 1.66 million in 2007 to about 2.7 million in 2012, experiencing a compound annual growth rate of 10 percent.
As a percentage, the bulk of this growth, according to the report, will happen in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (13 percent collectively). However, the Americas, at a 10 percent CAGR, dominate in raw numbers, growing from 685,700 in 2007 to a little more than 1.1 million in 2012. The Asia-Pacific region will see the slowest compound annual growth of the three major regions, at 8 percent.
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The report, entitled "The 2008 (ISC)² Information Security Workforce Study," polled 7,548 respondents from both the public sector and the private sector in fall 2007. It showed that the factors driving growth in information security include:
- Regulatory compliance initiatives that place responsibility on executives;
- Organizations' needs to prevent damage to reputation (i.e. maintaining public confidence); and
- Tangible financial costs for failing to meet regulatory requirements.
On this last one, Frost & Sullivan estimated that the cost any data breach runs anywhere from $50 to $200 per record lost, not including intangible losses resulting from damage to an organization's reputation.
Security Technologies: Deployments
Within the information security industry, two clear winners emerged in terms of the categories of technologies expected to be deployed worldwide within the next 12 months: wireless security solutions (15 percent) and biometrics (14 percent). In the Americas, biometrics ranked at No. 1, with wireless security coming in at No. 2.
Beyond these, intrusion detection and disaster recovery/business continuity tied at 12 percent. At 11 percent each were storage security and cryptography. (Storage security did not make the top 5 in the Americas.)
At the 10 percent level were:
- Intrusion prevention;
- Risk management solutions;
- Vulnerability assessment and penetration testing; and
- Incident management.
At the 9 percent response level were:
- Identity and access management;
- Security event or information management;
- Vulnerability management;
- SIM (Security Information Management); and
- Problem management.
And, at the lowest tier of the top-21 technologies scheduled for deployment, at 8 percent, were:
