Three-quarters of enterprises are ‘moving to adopt’ managed security services in the wake of inadequate budgets, increased regulatory pressures and staffing woes, according to Symantec’s 2009 Managed Security in the Enterprise Report.

That claim corroborates with data from research firm IDC, which predicts that the market for these services will more than double to $2.8 billion by 2012.

According the Symantec’s survey of 1000 IT managers (conducted in January), all but two percent of large organisations in the US and Europe claim to have suffered tangible losses from cyber attacks.

In addition 42% of companies claimed to have experienced downtime, 36% theft of personal data belonging to customers or employees and 37% theft of corporate data.

With an increasingly complex spread of threats, regulatory requirements and in the case of two-thirds of organisations, understaffing, 54% said providing security in-house was becoming more difficult, prompting their consideration of managed services.

Cyber security is a growing problem, yet organisations are having trouble addressing it. Managed security services provide a way for many organisations to close the gap,” said Grant Geyer, Symantec’s vice president of managed services.