The latest survey from IDC shows that over half of the enterprises in Asia-Pacific invested in security solutions in 2002.

Security software and services have drawn investments from more than half of the region's IT managers last year, cementing its position at the helm of regional IT priorities.

According to IDC's recent survey of 2,850 companies across 12 countries in Asia-Pacific (excluding Japan), 56 percent of enterprises splurged on security solutions in 2002.

Storage took second spot, drawing funds from 45 percent of the respondents while enterprise relationship management initiatives came in third at 34 percent.

While security was the hottest item on Asia's IT shopping list last year, IDC said enterprise portals and e-commerce applications recorded the highest growth rate.

Both segments grew by 5 percent in 2002 compared with the year before, the firm said.

"The flavour of investments in 2002 was clearly defensive," said Puni Rajah, IDC Asia-Pacific's vice president for software and services research. "Looking ahead in 2003, we expect much of this (defensiveness) to continue as global political and economic uncertainties persist."

As a poignant example of potential security threats, IDC had previously said a major cyberterrorism event could paralyse the Internet this year. Stemming from the looming US war with Iraq, the incident could take the form of a denial-of-service attack, a network intrusion or even a physical attack on key network assets, the firm said in December last year.

Despite the vague outlook, IDC expects spending on services and software to grow by 18 percent this year.

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