A new Cisco survey reports that IT decision makers in the public sector are still likely to increase investment in cyber security, along with cloud computing and networking, during the coming year - despite budget constraints.

It pays to look at where investments are being made, to determine your career options and accreditation. The research, which took in 400 government IT decision makers, indicated that reducing costs and increasing security continue to be top priorities. In fact a majority (59%) of respondents said they are likely to increase investment in cyber security over the next year, followed not surprisingly by cloud computing (45%) and networking (42%).

Other priorities for investment were:

• Video conferencing (39%)
• Data centre (35%)
• Broadband (32%)
• Collaboration solutions (30%)
• Big Data analytics (28%)

Elsewhere, 65% percent of those surveyed said they are familiar with the emerging area of software-defined networking (SDN), which automates routine networking tasks and instructs the infrastructure to do what is best to support an application. Furthermore, 58% of those familiar with it expect the technology will become a viable solution within their organisations in the next few years.

Finally, IT professionals, take note: In addition, having a network hacked into was considered as a worse possibility (71%) than being stuck in an elevator for 24 hours.