Companies spend an average of just 5 percent of their IT budget on security, but the sum varies by industry, according to a survey by Gartner. Broken down on per-employee basis, it comes to about $525 on average a year, reports Jeremy Kirk of IDG News.

Of that 5 percent, more than a third goes to personnel, a fourth goes to software and a fifth goes to hardware, with the remainder spent on outsourcing and consulting, Gartner found. The top priority for IT security is detecting and preventing intrusion. Managing patches, preventing data loss, and dealing with identity management and antivirus programs also rank among security priorities.

Meanwhile, in other survey news out of Gartner, businesses were found to spend about 10 percent of their external IT budget on cloud computing services, reports Anh Nguyen at ComputerWorldUK.

For more:
- see Jeremy Kirk's article at PCWorld
- Anh Nguyen's article at ComputerWorldUK

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