Information security received a 9.8% boost in the President's FY 2009 budget request, growing from $6.6 billion in 2008 to $7.3 billion in 2009. The Department of Transportation emerged as the leading requesting agency increasing its security request $432 million, or 130%. Much of this request may be tied to the desire to secure the department's IT infrastructure during its move. The Department of Defense follows Transportation with the largest dollar increase to its security request with a $131 million increase. If approved as requested DOD's overall security budget will increase from $3.9 billion to just over $4.0 billion.

Few agencies saw their budgets decrease, and for those that did the decreases varied significantly form under 1.0% to nearly 40%. The Corps of Engineers and Social Security Administration fared the worst out of all agencies seeing their security budgets cut by 40% and 38% respectively.

INPUT's Take:

Although most high-end request can expect to be pared down as the FY 09 budget moves through the authorization process, the enacted FY 08 budget hints that agencies are following a trend of spending more than requested. Spending on IT security is no exception to this rule as enacted FY 08 spending increased 8.8% over the FY 08 request, growing from a requested amount of $6.0 billion to an enacted amount over $6.6 billion.