A recent finding from TheInfoPro’s bi-annual study of the Information Security market indicated that 39 percent of the firms interviewed intended to spend more this year, and only 15 percent are spending less. This shows resiliency of the market during challenging economic times.

TheInfoPro, a division of leading analyst and data company The 451 Group (News - Alert), is an advisory and research firm offering real-world perspectives on the customer and market dynamics of the information technology landscape.

As a research firm, TheInfoPro uses a unique research methodology that harnesses the collective knowledge and insights of major IT organizations around the globe. It serves as a conduit between IT decision-makers, technology providers and institutional investors.

TheInfoPro’s recent findings from its bi-annual study of the Information Security market found that information security spends are strong with many diverse drivers; and data leakage prevention (DLP) and application-aware firewalls are some of the products on the move. The study was conducted by having one-on-one interviews with over 150 decision-makers in the Global 2000.

The Information Security study, which is completed biannually, is based on hour-long interviews with Information Security decision-makers at large enterprises in North America. The most recent study, which was led by newly appointed Research Director, Daniel Kennedy, focused particularly on the impact of virtualization, cloud and mobile devices on an organization's security efforts.

During one of the one-on-one interviews, decision-makers said that compliance, mobile devices and preventing data loss are the key drivers for spending increases. According to the findings, Information Security Professionals are not planning a slowdown, and 37 percent are planning an increase in spend, with 16 percent planning a decrease.

According to TheInfoPro, Data Leakage Prevention (DLP) resides in the top spot of TheInfoPro's proprietary Information Security Technology Heat Index, which gauges immediacy of planned implementation for 40 technologies, as the G2000 look to protect custodial and intellectual property data from leaking out of their environment.

Currently, traditional anti-virus vendors, such as Symantec (News - Alert) (SYMC) and Intel's (INTC) McAfee, are looking forward to benefit with rollouts of both endpoint and network DLP on tap, according to a source.

In addition, TheInfoPro’s finding also found that application-aware firewalls make a nice jump in the Heat Index, with Palo Alto (News - Alert) and Check Point (CHKP) benefiting from the 28 percent of in-plan implementations.

Kennedy said in a statement, “Information Security spending is very solid in 2011, and looks to remain that way for 2012. It is not difficult to see why, as significant data breaches in the last few years have never been far from the front page. In addition, environmental complexity continues to increase, including the effects of virtualization and cloud implementations, and consumer IT starts to drive enterprise IT requirements, especially in the mobile computing space.”