Security Seen as Top Obstacle to Success in Application Economy: Report

Companies need to find a new approach to IT security if they want to be successful in today’s application economy, according to a new report from CA Technologies.

A survey conducted by Vanson Bourne on behalf of CA Technologies shows that senior IT and business leaders from across the world consider security a top obstacle to becoming more effective in the application economy. That’s because while the application economy increases opportunities for the expansion of products and services, it also increases the threat landscape.

Of the 1,425 respondents (including 142 CSOs and CISOs), 56% have named data breach protection their top security priority. Other security priorities are improving mobile customer experience (42%), protecting identities (39%), improving compliance (36%), ensuring security for cloud applications and data (34%), and securing APIs (20%). Ten percent of the respondents consider leveraging security to enable new business opportunities as one of their priorities.

While roughly one third of respondents said they consider security to be equally about control and about enabling the business, there are many who believe it’s mostly about control (37%).

Mobility (apps and devices) has a significant impact on a company’s security practices and policies with respect to both customers and employees, according to nearly half of respondents.

APIs play an important role in today’s application economy and nearly 80% of the survey respondents indicated that they are opening access to their APIs to suppliers, customers and partners. While APIs have numerous benefits, they can also pose a serious risk if they are not properly secured, CA Technologies noted.

The study shows many IT and business leaders recognize that security can drive growth. For example, 48% of respondents expect to see an increase in the number of customers, while 31% said they are already seeing increased revenue from new services enabled by improved security.

Respondents said their organizations currently spend 18% of their IT budget on security. However, they expect the percentage to increase to 25% in three years from now.

“Today we need to live in a security-first world — light-years from the days when security was an afterthought and bolted on after a service or application was deployed,” said Amit Chatterjee, executive vice president of CA Technologies. “With the application economy going full-throttle in the hyper-connected world of people, devices and expanding ambient data, businesses realize that security goes beyond protection. The same tools that govern who and what can access our data, also can deliver a frictionless and positive customer experience and contribute to business growth in a variety of ways.”

The complete research paper, titled “8 Steps to Modernize Security for the Application Economy,” is available for download.