Data from Forrester shows that while 47% of security leaders at enterprises in the Asia Pacific region expect their budgets to increase in 2019, only 11% expect increases in excess of 10%. Regional economic uncertainty — particularly due to the US-China trade war — has made increases even less likely.

Additional highlights from the report include:

  • 38% of APAC security budgets will be spent on buying, upgrading, and maintaining on-premises technology solutions; in contrast, just 12% will be spent on staffing.
  • In addition to cloud security, strategic priorities in the region include having a formal technology risk management framework, tying cybersecurity risk to enterprise risk, and rolling out effective security training and awareness. These strategic priorities indicate that organizations are finally setting themselves up to transform their cybersecurity capabilities.
  • Security still seen as mainly an IT issue: 55% of security leaders at enterprises in Asia Pacific say that spending decisions are made mostly or only by IT. And 39% say that their senior-most security decision maker reports to the CIO, while 28% say that she reports to IT operations.  Chief Information Security Officers must build a positive culture and engage execs, end users, and the multitude of stakeholders in between to be able to effect change.