The increased adoption of mobile, social and cloud computing is driving growth in security spending among organizations that are also becoming more aware of threats on all those fronts.

Worldwide spending on information security will top US$71 billion this year, an increase of 7.9 percent over 2013, with the data loss prevention segment recording the fastest growth at 18.9 percent, research firm Gartner said Friday.

Research director Lawrence Pingree pointed to what he called the “democratization” of security threats, with malicious software tools that can be used to launch advanced attacks now more broadly available online via an underground economy. While this has made life even more difficult for CISOs, it has also resulted in increased awareness. Security is no longer seen as just an IT function or a cost center, he said.

Organizations are shifting existing resources away from security device administration and monitoring, toward mitigation and incident response.

The growing popularity of hosted applications and infrastructure is also changing the security sector. In 2015, roughly 10 percent of overall IT security enterprise capabilities will be delivered as a cloud service, Gartner said. Small and medium sized companies will rely on hosted security services to an even greater extent.

Unfortunately, many organizations continue to lack staff with the appropriate security skills. To keep up with hackers, more than half of organizations will by 2018 rely on security services firms that specialize in data protection, risk and infrastructure management, according to Gartner.

Regulatory compliance has been a major factor driving spending on security in the last three years, particularly in the U.S, according to Gartner. Privacy and data protection laws in various stages of implementation or planning in Australia, the European Union, Singapore and Malaysia will further help drive growth.

Learn about Security protection for your organization at CED Solutions classes on:  Certified Ethical Hacking, Computer Forensics, Security Analyst, CISSP, CASP, Security+, CCNA: Security, CCNP: Security; Security for Windows 2012 Server; Security for Windows 7 and Windows 8.

CED Solutions is a Cisco Learning Partner, Microsoft Gold Learning Partner and the #1 location for Microsoft Certifications in North America for the last 6 years combined.  CED Solutions is a CompTIA Partner, EC Council Partner, and many others and is one of the largest providers of training in North America.  The Atlanta facility provides IT training for up to 300 students per day, with separate buildings dedicated to training. CED Solutions provides training for up to 10,000 students per year and students take up to 800 certification exams every two weeks.