Privacy budgets expected to decrease in 2024

Two in every five (41%) privacy professionals in Europe state their budgets are underfunded and over half (56%) expect them to decrease this year. That’s according to new research from ISACA, the leading global professional association helping individuals and organisations in their pursuit of digital trust.

Anticipated drops in privacy budgets come despite half (53%) of organisations reporting that their technical privacy teams are understaffed. Two in five (41%) businesses also state that they have trouble retaining qualified privacy professionals.

“Reducing privacy budgets would be deemed normal if privacy operations were considered mature and mainstream. This however is not the case, and our research highlights that a combination of reduced investments with lack of skills in an increasingly sophisticated cyberthreat landscape is a recipe for disaster. It is also proof that more holistic training at a board and privacy leader level needs to take place for both understanding and communicating the needs respectively.” says Chris Dimitriadis, Global Chief Strategy Officer at ISACA.

To combat some of the challenges they’re facing, organisations have been diligent about providing training to employees – 68% of privacy professionals say their company offers privacy training annually while 58% offer training when new hires are made. 71% of respondents say privacy training and awareness programs have had a positive impact on wider employee privacy awareness.

However, there is still a long way to go for businesses, as only 10% of respondents feel completely confident in their organisation's privacy team's ability to ensure data privacy and achieve compliance with new privacy laws and regulations.

It’s clear that a skills gap still prevails for core privacy staff. Experience with different types of technologies or applications (65%), technical expertise (50%) and IT operations knowledge (42%) are the biggest skills gaps privacy professionals are facing within their teams.

Reassuringly, organisations are taking steps to reduce that skills gap, with 52% offering training to allow non-privacy staff to move into privacy roles, while 39% are increasing the usage of contractors or external consultants.

“Organisations clearly crave expertise when it comes to managing privacy compliance and issues. This starts with putting the right resources towards privacy training and prioritisation. Only then can they protect their data, build trust with consumers, and preserve supplier relationships. Better privacy ultimately benefits us all,” adds Safia Kazi, ISACA principal, privacy professional practices.

Cequence Security has introduced Agent Personas to provide more granular control over AI agent...
Cybercrime in the financial sector has intensified, with AI posing new challenges. CrowdStrike...
Harness report finds that AI coding tools are being widely adopted in software engineering, with...
Public sector leaders globally are evaluating agentic AI for autonomous task completion as...
Boomi plans to acquire Lunar.dev, aiming to expand capabilities in AI governance and improve...
Black Kite and Sayari have partnered to combine cyber risk data with corporate and supply chain...
AHEAD expands its European presence through an acquisition, a senior appointment, and new...
ODEON Cinemas Group has partnered with BlueVoyant to modernise its cybersecurity operations across...