Federal Cybersecurity Spending To Hit $13.3B By 2015

Federal investment in cybersecurity will reach $13.3 billion by 2015, driven by a 445% increase in security incidents over the last four years and the shortage of qualified security professionals.

The size of the investment represents an annual increase of 9.1% over the next five years, according to the Federal Information Security Market, 2010-2015 report by Input. The firm based the report on its own analytics, interviews with federal IT professionals and the government's own spending forecasts, it said.

IT security represents about 15% of agency IT budgets and has produced the largest staffing increases of all IT positions in the last one to two years. However, lack of qualified security professionals to fill positions needed to boost cybersecurity is both a key obstacle to federal cybersecurity efforts and also driving investment in the space, according to the report. Because the government itself doesn't have the expert personnel it needs to implement security in complex IT environments like those of federal agencies, it will have to invest in training its own staff or contract work out to qualified professionals, according to Input. This represents an opportunity for federal contractors to get in on the action.