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Indonesia enterprises growing more concerned about IT security

Most Indonesian enterprises will increase their information and technology (IT) spending this year and beyond, with IT security becoming one of the top five areas where they will put their spending, a recent survey by the International Data Corporation (IDC) Indonesia shows

Khoirul Amin (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Sat, August 16, 2014

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Indonesia enterprises growing more concerned about IT security

M

ost Indonesian enterprises will increase their information and technology (IT) spending this year and beyond, with IT security becoming one of the top five areas where they will put their spending, a recent survey by the International Data Corporation (IDC) Indonesia shows.

The survey, which interviewed 350 companies, government agencies and educational institutions across the country between April and May, has shown a new trend where IT security has for the first time become one of the enterprises'€™ top five major IT focuses.

'€œIn our similar survey last year, IT security was not on the list of areas enterprises wanted to spend their IT funds,'€ said IDC Indonesia head of operations Sudev Bangah on Thursday.

According to the survey, 57 percent of the enterprises will increase their IT spending, with 12 percent of the IT budget going to IT security. It is predicted that IT spending in the country will increase by 12.5 percent to US$16.8 billion this year from $14.7 billion last year.

Procurement of hardware devices, meanwhile, will still be the main focus of most enterprises.

Spending for smartphones, PC (desktops and laptops) and tablets are predicted to be allocated 25 percent, 17 percent and 16 percent of the enterprises'€™ IT spending, respectively.

Bangah said that the growing use of mobile devices by most enterprises in the country had urged them to be more cautious on possible data losses.

'€œWith higher enterprise mobility in which lots of data is stored on mobile devices, such as laptops,
tablets and smartphones, potential data leaks are getting bigger,'€
he said.

The IDC Indonesia survey has revealed that 72 percent of the enterprises are willing to spend more on IT security due to potential data loss concerns.

The rising awareness of IT security was also driven by a number of global occurrences in which cyber attacks had massively threatened the credentials of many people, he said.

US-based Internet security company Hold Security announced early this month that Russian hackers had successfully stolen a huge database of 1.2 billion user names and passwords as well as half a billion email addresses.

The firm also cited that the attacks had breached around 420,000 websites, including small enterprises'€™ websites.

A cyber attack also previously struck US retail giant Target, affecting 40 million credit and debit card numbers as well as 70 million personal records.

Bangah said that in Indonesia alone, media and communication enterprises had experienced the most data loss.

'€œIt is obvious that media and communication enterprises handle data combined on various platforms, such online and printed, daily and many save their files on thumb drives [making them prone to data loss],'€ he said.

He said that while media and communication enterprises had become the most vulnerable to cyber attack, the enterprises were the most committed to IT security spending, along with banking enterprises and government agencies.

Bangah said, however, that despite the growing awareness of the need for IT security, less than 10 percent of the surveyed enterprises knew what sort of data they needed to protect.

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