More than half of companies will increase IT security spending in 2019 due to fear of data breaches and the penalties that could follow.

A survey of security engineers and tech company leaders was carried-out by data security website eSecurity Planet. The threat of fines under GDPR was among the subjects highlighted.

Among top spending priorities were web gateways, network access control (NAC) solutions and data loss prevention (DLP) tools.

“The 2019 State of IT Security survey gives me hope, as organisations are responding to the challenges and are not idly sitting by waiting for the next breach,” said Sean Michael Kerner, senior security editor for eSecurity Planet. 

Drawing broad conclusions from the survey, roughly two-thirds of organisations appear well prepared to address security risks, while a third should reassess their controls. About 64 percent of respondents said they conduct penetration testing at least annually, and 60 percent conduct threat hunting exercises at the same rate.

Database security, advanced persistent threats, DDoS attacks, insider threats and ransomware are the biggest areas of concern, with a range of 27 to 38 percent of respondents expressing doubts about their preparedness for those threats.