With so much money coming in, why not spend more on security?

It was a pretty good week overall for the tech vendors, with several of them announcing some very upbeat quarterly results and exceeding analyst expectations. 

• Microsoft reported its highest quarterly revenue ever--$16.04 billion--22 percent higher than the same quarter last year. The company attributed the revenue jump largely to enterprise purchases of Windows 7 and Office 2010. Beating analyst expectations, Microsoft earned a profit of $4.52 billion.
• Apple also reported its highest quarterly revenue ever, coming in not far behind Microsoft with $15.7 billion, an 88 percent increase over the same quarter last year. Apple's earnings were driven largely by sales of the iPad and iPhone, but it turns out that business users were behind a significant portion of those sales.
• In announcing its quarterly results, AT&T (the exclusive carrier for the iPhone and iPad) said that a "surprising" number of business users have expressed interest in the iPad. AT&T announced quarterly revenue of $30.8 billion and earnings of $4 billion, a 26 percent increase over the same quarter last year, crediting the success largely to iPhone activations.
• IBM reported revenue of $23.7 billion for the quarter, with a profit of $3.4 billion.
• Earlier in the month, Intel announced the most profitable quarter in its 42-year history, with revenue of $10.8 billion, a 34 percent increase over the same quarter last year.

This is all good news for the vendors, and healthy vendors are good for their customers who depend on them. But for the economy at large--on which the vast majority of us depend in countless ways--these companies should be doing more. The record-breaking quarterly reports appear to be part and parcel of the jobless recovery, belying the reality that many Americans are still feeling the effects of recession. 

Earlier this month, Microsoft reportedly let go hundreds of employees, after having let go thousands last year. With earnings of $4 billion this quarter--and its highest quarterly revenue ever--do these layoffs make long-term sense at a time of massive disruption in enterprise and consumer IT? In the spring, AT&T allegedly laid off hundreds of employees, which bloggers at Gawker noted occurred shortly before the debacle that revealed the email addresses of thousands of iPad owners.

Workforce needs at tech companies are shifting, but security is one area in which Microsoft, AT&T and pretty much all other tech vendors could devote more resources. With record-breaking quarterly results, it makes sense to start investing more in producing secure goods and services. This would be a good area for these companies to focus some beefed-up hiring efforts. - Caron