The Rising Costs of Cybersecurity Are Driving IT Modernization

Regardless of size cybersecurity has become a massive source of frustration for organizations all sizes. A greater percentage of IT spending is now being consumed by cybersecurity products and services that while perceived as being critical to the business, don’t in of themselves help a business to grow. A recent survey of 1,300 organizations conducted by ESI ThougtLab and the Wall Street Journal finds on average organizations will increase their spending on average cybersecurity by 13 percent in the coming year. That’s on top of a seven percent increase in cybersecurity spending this year, the report finds. The most galling aspect of that increased spending, of course, is that the economic damage being inflicted by cyberattacks continues to be measured in billions of dollars. The challenge and opportunity many IT leaders are now wresting with is determining to what degree modernizing their IT environment might enable them to reduce spending on cybersecurity. The key difference being that every dollar invested in a modern IT environment enables an organization to ad the very least reduce the total cost of IT or increase the total amount of revenue being generated by new applications.