'It's inevitable that IT budgets will be taking a hit in 2009, if they haven't already, so justifying the value of investments will be even more crucial in any purchasing decision.
Security is one of those areas that is always important - you can't just put security projects on the back burner until you have the budget or resources available.
Security threats are ever changing, the attacks are getting more sophisticated every day and the risk that a business is exposed to online needs constant re-assessment.
Security is not a set-and-forget solution, new risks arise daily and talking to your customers about them is imperative.
Companies often go about their day-to-day and can overlook the importance of their security posture.
On-going management, monitoring and re-assessment of the security environment is vital to ensure the correct level of protection.
As an example, the network perimeter is an obvious place to build out the first line of security defence.
The problem is that attacks today are focusing increasingly on the application layer and often fool perimeter security into thinking they are legitimate.
We're seeing attacks that target databases, email servers or credit card systems become increasingly common.
To counter this, Firewalls capable of reading into the application layer of data packets can mitigate against this threat.
Looking internally, the threat from within is often seen as one of the biggest.
And, as businesses begin to look at downsizing, the risk of disgruntled staff stealing company secrets or sensitive information is very real.
The challenge is to secure against the different types of users from within depending on authorisation rights and access levels.
Technology is now able to do this at a network layer in a way that was previously very difficult to do.
Proving the value of security means evaluating new threats and helping companies calculate their risk exposure.
As we said before, it's not a one time sale but needs continuous dialogue in response to these threats and new technology solutions.
Then you can start to justify security spending.'
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