A survey of 837 IT leaders and 201 line of business (LOB) executives conducted by the market research form Foundry, a unit of International Data Group (IDG), finds 91 percent of CIOs expect their technology budgets to either increase or stay the same in 2023, with cybersecurity (70 percent), data analysis (55 percent), data privacy (55 percent), artificial intelligence/machine learning (55 percent), and customer experience (53 percent) identified as top priorities. In fact, the need for security improvements was cited as the top reason for IT budgets to increase in 2023.
The challenge, of course, is even as more budget dollars are allocated for cybersecurity, most organizations lack the expertise needed to successfully deploy additional capabilities. As a result, many organizations will be relying on managed security service providers (MSSPs) that have the expertise required to secure modern IT environments.
MSSPs can address the #1 challenge organizations are facing
The single biggest challenge when it comes to security is the continued expansion of the attack surface. Many organizations are simultaneously deploying applications both in the cloud and at the network edge. Each stack of software creates yet another platform that needs to be secured. More difficult still, many of the latest applications are based on microservices constructed using containers that require a fundamentally different approach to cybersecurity. The tools and platforms employed to secure legacy monolithic applications running on top of a virtual machine are not applicable to this emerging class of cloud-native applications that run on Kubernetes clusters.
To address that challenge, cybersecurity teams are hoping that a new generation of platforms accessed via the cloud will enable them to secure what have become highly distributed computing environments without having to hire additional headcount. One of the primary reasons organizations don’t adopt any number of cybersecurity tools and platforms is they simply don’t have enough staff resources to deploy and manage them. Many of them are now realizing the value of centralization that most MSSPs discovered a long time ago as they provided security services across multiple clients.
Growing attack service promotes collaboration between internal IT teams and external providers
Replacing all the point products that many organizations employ today, however, requires a level of investment that many organizations, even after increasing budgets, are still going to be reluctant to make.
Yet, it may still be a little while before most organizations come to that conclusion. There is still a strong bias within IT teams toward buying platforms that are managed internally versus relying on an external services provider. Nevertheless, progress is being made as more internal IT teams look for ways to co-manage services in collaboration with an external services provider. In fact, 2023 might very well be remembered as the year when in the face of a growing number of sophisticated threats, internal and external cybersecurity teams finally put aside their differences in the name of the greater cybersecurity good.
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