IT security will be the top investment priority in 2023

Businesses prioritize security above all else regarding their technology investment for the upcoming year. Cybersecurity is increasingly taking priority over innovation as organizations focus on protecting their systems and assets.

Security before innovation

Red Hat surveyed 1703 IT leaders for its 2023 Global Tech Outlook report to understand where businesses are in their digital transformation journeys, their investment priorities, and what issues they face.

According to the research, 44% of respondents ranked IT security investment among their top three funding objectives for the upcoming year, along with cloud infrastructure (36%) and IT/cloud management (35%), making cybersecurity the most popular overall priority. Security was highlighted as a primary priority across a range of technological areas, including cloud infrastructure (42%), big data and analytics (45%), and automation (35%).

The researchers discovered that more businesses prioritize cybersecurity as part of their digital transformation initiatives: 20% of IT leaders said security came first, as opposed to 19% who stated innovation is a priority. In 2021, 24% of IT leaders claimed that innovation was the main emphasis of their digital transformation, while only 17% cited IT security.

The report shows that businesses are placing more emphasis on cybersecurity due to the two-year boom in cloud deployments and the widespread adoption of remote working, both of which have increased security risks to enterprise networks.

Culture is forgotten

While security is rightfully at the top of leaders' priorities lists, culture seems to have fallen to the wayside. Just 7% of respondents mentioned culture, which was the lowest-ranked priority on IT leaders' digitization agendas (up from 6% in 2021). Given its overall significance, researchers describe the lack of focus on culture as disappointing and point out that people and culture greatly influence digital transformation.

The non-IT spending priorities of IT leaders reflected this sentiment: When asked what their investment objectives were outside of products and solutions, 37% of respondents named digital transformation strategy, closely followed by technology skills training (37%). The recruiting and retention of IT/developers (28%), compliance (28%), and people and process skills training (30%) rounded the top five. The research's authors summarized the results of the top five non-IT funding priorities: "In other words, the top five non-IT funding priorities are all about people to at least some degree. Only hiring security and compliance staff among security funding priorities is a somewhat puzzling low-priority outlier, as we've seen."

There is a minimal change from 2021 in terms of how far along organizations are in their digital transformation journeys: 12% said they were "leading," 23% said they were "accelerating," 31% said they were "transforming," and 18% said they were "emerging." However, 6% of respondents acknowledged their transformation journey is "stalled," which is twice the 3% figure from 2021. IT executives attribute this to several factors, including hiring and financial difficulties. Similarly, 6% of IT leaders stated that they had not yet begun, or were otherwise beginning, their paths toward digital transformation, while 3% had no plans at all to do so.

Developers have more say in IT decisions

Lower-level IT personnel appear to have more say in organizational IT decisions. The majority of decision-makers for IT purchases continue to be C-level executives (92%), vice presidents (78%), and directors (74%), while 38% cited developers as key decision-makers. While lower than management roles, this is still a big proportion. With 62%, developers have a higher percentage of influence on critical IT decisions than company presidents (8%), vice presidents (22%), directors (27%), and managers (48%). The research data does not prove that developers now have the most decision-making power in enterprise IT. Still, it does prove that developers at least perceive their own power as increasing.