UK companies are spending an increasing amount of time and money protecting themselves from IT security threats despite claims from some sectors of the technology industry that the war against hackers and virus writers is being won. This is one of five key conclusions drawn by Butler Group, based on its analysis of results from the Q1 2006 “UK IT Priorities Survey,” undertaken by ZDNet UK, the UK’s leading technology website and a property of CNET Networks UK. While the survey found that companies are prioritizing investments in anti-virus, anti-spyware and network security, it also clearly indicates that other important areas of risk, such as identity and access management, are largely being over-looked. Other top priorities are application development, networking and communications, server hardware and desktop software.