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ayJanuary/February 2005

Bullish British SMEs poisedto splash on IT securityBrian McKenna

One quarter of UK small

businesses plan to increase

spending on IT security in

2005, compared with four per

cent in Germany.

These were two of the find-

ings of an HP survey into IT se-

curity in European small and

medium businesses carried out

by Benchmark research in

October 2004.The results were

collected from executives in

300 firms in the UK, France and

Germany.

Security is, however, a top

concern for 56% of German

companies, while 62% of UK

companies neglect it in favour

of return on investment and

cost control. So, increased

British spending may conceal a

less secure IT environment.

And around half the companies

across all three countries have

been exposed to virus attacks

in the last year.

The Brits are also on the

verge of spending more on IT

in general in the coming year,

particularly in the UK where

77% of respondents say spend-

ing will definitely increase next

year, and 37% expect that in-

crease to be in double figures.

This optimism is not shared

by the French market, where

only 44% of companies expect

spending to increase. Germany

is the most pessimistic market

in this respect with 54% seeing

no prospect for an increase in

IT spending.

British small business people

emerged from the survey more

bullish than their German and

French counterparts.

Eighty per cent of UK SMEs

believe their business prospects

are now better than last year,

compared with 45% in

Germany and 46% in France.

Reuters steps up outsourcedmonitoringBrian McKenna

Reuters is outsourcing intru-

sion monitoring to NetSec,

a Washington-based MSSP with

notable US government con-

tracts.

NetSec is currently monitor-

ing about a dozen intrusion de-

tection devices and some asso-

ciated firewalls on the global in-

formation provider’s networks,

and is increasing that to a few

dozen, confirmed Malcolm

Kelly, global IT security director

responsible for operational se-

curity at Reuters.

The devices are deployed in

Europe, the United States and

Asia, and the MSSP is monitor-

ing them from its Secure

Operations Centre near

Washington.

"They are monitoring critical

points on the network just now,

and we will review the situa-

tion once the twelve months

has elapsed”, said Kelly.“We are

seeing a lot of benefits.”

Reuters selected NetSec after

a review of managed security

service providers that included

Symantec, Qinetiq, Ubizen,

Verisign, and Unisys.

"They had a very strong web

portal capability”, said Kelly.

“They were also good from a

workflow perspective, and have

a good roadmap”.

Explaining the business ra-

tionale for the deal, Kelly said:

“We get more and more re-

quests from our major clients

about what we are doing from

a security perspective; and we

have networks going into the

major banks. So it is good for us

to match them”.

"Reuters also has to be care-

ful about any technology that

automatically shuts things

down — our top priority is

continued service”.

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