With a clear knowledge gap among many IT professionals and security specialists demanding salaries in excess of £50,000, many organisations since the recent downturn in the economy have looked to outsource all or part of their IT security. The main benefits being to deliver improved value across the board and importantly increase profits. With lower investments being made in staff and contracts agreed up front, this becomes entirely feasible. . . .
Information Technology departments often demand one of the largest annual budgets in the company, but where does the money go? We all know that IT budgets are spent on everything from resourcing and training to upgrading with latest technologies, but as Shareholders, Directors and Chief Information Officers (CIO's) are we aware how much spending is devoted to securing e-business and critical information?

According to recent research, information security is now commanding 5% of the annual IT budget. The reason it has never been of a higher priority at board level is due to the rapidly changing business environment we work within. The widespread adoption of e-mail, the Internet and surrounding technologies has enabled access to a worldwide market of potential customers; international boundaries are shortened and the sharing of information and data has expedited many business processes.

Despite its benefits, this e-revolution has brought with it its own dark side. Hackers, malicious attacks from disgruntled employees, website defacement, spamming, denial of service attacks, Trojan Horses, viruses, bugs, worms are amongst a plethora of known security dangers that plague every business network on a 24x7 basis.

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