IDC's projections of the rise in spending on security services reflect the growing need that businesses have to forge relationships with security professionals. "At the mid-market level, a lot of companies don't have a dedicated person handling security," says IDC analyst Christine Tenneson. . . .
Spending on I.T. support services will jump from US$551 million in 2003 to $808 million in 2008, a new report from research firm IDC projects. It indicates that security software alone will not mitigate the weaknesses in enterprise systems.

The data security industry, once oriented toward vendor software products, is now thought of in terms of services -- and companies that perform systems monitoring report skyrocketing demand for those services. Even software vendors say that enterprises cannot stay on top of their security issues with products alone.

Dedicated Persons

Security threats have become so numerous in type and frequency of attacks -- and change so often -- that addressing such threats is part of normal business practices. A magic-bullet solution to the exploitation of weaknesses in systems will probably not emerge any time soon, if at all.


IDC's projections of the rise in spending on security services reflect the growing need that businesses have to forge relationships with security professionals.