Banks to increase spending on IT risk management

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IDC Financial Insights projects worldwide risk information technologies and services spending in the financial sector will increase 22% from $79 billion to $97.3 billion by 2018. The report, Worldwide IT Spending 2013-2018, predicts risk information technology in financial services will account for 18.2% of the projected $530 billion in overall IT spending by 2018.

Risk information technologies and services account for 17.1% of overall IT spending in 2015, according to the report, which analyzed risk management in the financial services sector. Spending is projected to increase the most by 2018 in the following sectors: compliance and internal controls, credit risk, and information/cyber security.

The percentage of overall IT spending dedicated to risk information technology and services was largest in the capital markets sector, where 22.2% of overall budget is allotted. Capital markets IT spending will increase to 24.2% by 2018, according to the report.

Banks have reason to be concerned

DDoS attacks were 47% more frequent in Q1 of 2014 than in Q1 of last year, according to a report by Akamai Technologies and subsidiary Prolexic. A recent Verizon study found that "no organization is immune from a data breach and…the increasing difficulty in identifying attacks is compounding the issue."

A recent report revealed most banking apps on Apple devices were susceptible to unwanted access. The Bank of England recently hired white hat hackers to test and improve the resilience of the networks behind 20 of the UK's biggest banks and financial services.

The wireless network security market is projected to grow from $8.47 billion in 2014 to $15.55 billion by 2019, according to the "Wireless Network Security Market by Solutions, Services Worldwide Market Forecasts and Analysis (2014-2019)" report.

• Last month, the "Heartbleed Bug" threatened to expose the information contained on millions of servers worldwide.