Is security outsourcing up or down? Survey says: down

I am not Richard Dawson and this ain’t the Family Feud. But I don’t quite get the results as reported by Bill Brenner on CSO online and his podcast. According to Bill the economic downturn has led to companies spending less on outsourced security and doing more in house. This seems to be counter-intuitive and against all of the evidence I have seen. In fact most analysis I have seen says that the economic turmoil has led to a greater use of security outsourcing. Companies cannot afford the resources in house, full time and instead are saving costs outsourcing security.

If indeed they are spending less on outsourced security I would hypothesize that they are not forgoing spending money on outsourced security by doing it in house, but are actually foregoing spending on security all together. Of course they don’t want to say that, so instead say they are taking it in house and having existing resources handle it.  If those resources could handle it to begin with they would not have outsourced to begin with! The realities of the security market strike again.

It could of course also be specific to the questions asked. Perhaps with the great firewall management tools recently introduced like Tufin Technologies larger enterprises are taking more firewall management in house. But for the majority of the market I don’t see taking security in house and actually doing it as a key driver of saving money.

One thing Bill does say though that is worth repeating is that whether you in house or outsource security, you do not abdicate your responsibility for your company’s security.