TOM KEMP'S CENTRIFY BLOG

IdM: Top Intend to Spend

Thursday, March 8, 2007

I recently came upon a survey authored a few months ago by Sarah Friar over at Goldman Sachs entitled "Security Spending Survey: Security Spending on the Offensive." Sarah covered NetIQ when I was an executive there; I had presented at some of Goldman Sachs' Software Retreats in the past, and I knew her surveys to be top-notch. In this particular survey Sarah had surveyed "50 managers with decision-making authority for security spending at multi-national Fortune 1000 companies."

The good news for us vendors in the security software sector is that she was predicting 2006 spending on security would grow 12% and that her first read on 2007 spending was also very positive.

Not surprising, her study revealed the biggest driver for security spending is compliance as shown below with over 78% of respondents saying it was their top driver as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1.  Goldman Sachs Security Spending Survey. Compliance tops the list of drivers for IT spending. (Click to see an enlarged version.)

This matches the fact that compliance is a key driver of our solution at Centrify, and some of the most downloaded white papers on our web site are descriptions of how Centrify DirectControl can help address SOX requirements, the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), and compliance in general.

The second driver is "Internal Threats" at 68%. Stay tuned for news from Centrify on our plans in this area.

Given that compliance is such a key driver of security spending, it is not surprising that the Goldman Sachs security survey goes on to document that Identity and Access Management is the top "intend to spend" category within security, as shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2.  Concerns over insider threats are reflected in increased spending for IAM products. (Click to see an enlarged version.)

The survey notes: "As Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions help limit the number of individuals who have access to sensitive materials as well as recording who accessed what, it is not surprising to see IAM solutions scoring highly in our survey for the third time running, with 78% of respondents expecting to increase spending in the area over the next 12 months."

Given the pain that these CISOs are clearly expressing regarding Identity and Access Management, we at Centrify think we offer the painkiller for them. Our solution "embraces and extends" their existing Active Directory deployment by integrating non-Microsoft systems, applications, databases, etc. with Active Directory. This means all the benefits you have in the Windows environment from an identity perspective (single sign-on, centralized point of access control, etc.) now extend across the enterprise, making it much easier and cheaper to meet your compliance needs than, say, putting in a complex synchronization solution.

I think the key takeaway from my perspective from this report is that it is comforting to know that Centrify's focus on compliance matches what customers think is their top priority within security. If you have not done so already, check out some of our compliance white papers today.

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