Small firms are more concerned about protecting data and have boosted their spending accordingly
CORPORATE SPENDING ON information technology security is increasing as protecting computer networks from hackers and virus writers becomes an ever greater challenge for businesses.
Recently, threats such as mass-mailing worms have grabbed headlines, pushing data security higher up on the agenda, even for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) - a sector traditionally less concerned with keeping computers and data protected.
David Sykes, Symantec senior director for enterprise sales in Asia-Pacific, said: 'SMEs [have become] very concerned with security. They now realise they have a lot of data that is important to them.'
To help businesses address these concerns, security solution providers such as Symantec are moving towards providing what Mr Sykes calls integrated solutions. That is a set of security features bundled into one package - such as anti-virus software and a firewall combined with an anti-spyware application.
Mr Sykes compared this with Microsoft's bundling of office productivity applications in Microsoft Office.