Years of investment pay off as Asia leads the world in security practices and performance.

Among all regions, Asia has the fewest respondents who expect a decrease in security budgets this year. In fact, roughly 60% of Asian respondents expect to see an increase over the next 12 months. That’s down from 74% in 2011, but still among the highest of any region.

But Asia’s success in creating a culture of security goes beyond spending. The region, in fact, boasts the highest number of self-proclaimed front-runners among our survey respondents. Confidence in information security runs high in Asia, and at least some of this confidence is justified by the extent to which strategy, technology, and processes are in place.

For example, senior security executives report directly to the CEO more often in Asia than elsewhere—an important measure of security’s place in organizational culture. And it’s clear that this culture of security runs deep: Asian organizations are the second most likely to bake security into major projects from the start, and are more likely than their peers in other regions to base security spending on factors like business continuity and disaster recovery, rather than other external drivers.

Asia respondents also put their organizations at or near the top of global averages in terms of security and privacy technology deployment, and also in terms of process. As for keeping up with new challenges, Asia rates highly for mobile security initiatives and cloud security strategy.

Security budgets are almost flat in North America, but certain strategies show gains.

At first glance, the budget outlook for North America is uninspiring. Only about one-third of respondents expect to see a bump in their security budgets, continuing a modest uptrend but far behind Asia and South America. Almost the same percentage—a larger percentage than in any other region—expects budgets to remain flat, and uncertainty hangs over the discussion of dollars, with almost one-quarter of respondents saying they do not know where spending is headed.

But look a little closer and one trend emerges: predictable outcomes. Responses from North American organizations indicate that they are the best in the world at staying on plan when it comes to IT projects. Based on their survey responses, they are the least likely to defer capital or operational projects, and the deferrals that do happen tend to be shorter than those in other regions. And North American firms are the least likely to cut budgets for capital and operational projects.

This strength in process and planning extends to other areas. Respondents say that their contingency plans for downtime, for example, are quite effective. Indeed, average downtimes over the past 12 months as a result of security incidents (unavailable services/applications/network) are lower in North America than in other regions.

Other areas in which North American respondents indicate superior performance when measured against peers include the vital areas of mobility, social media, and the cloud. While progress in these areas still lags the adoption rates of the technologies, North America ties with Asia for the lead in cloud security strategy and is tops in mobile and social networking security—the latter by a considerable margin. Another distinction: Responses from North American firms indicate that they are far and away the least likely to outsource security functions.

South America plays catch-up on security investments and emerges as a leader in some important categories

An upbeat mood is evident in South America, where spending has picked up after a fallow spell and confidence is on the rebound. More than 60% of respondents expect to see their security budgets increase in the next 12 months, including the highest proportion in any region expecting very large budget increases of 30% or more. Conversely, deferrals and cuts to project budgets are more frequent than in most other regions.

The surge of investment comes as tough economic times were beginning to deplete the region’s security arsenal. Now South American respondents are at or near the top of global rankings for confidence in security culture and the effectiveness of security activities. In terms of privacy and security technologies, South America tends to outscore Europe and in some cases has surpassed North America.

Looking to the future, South American respondents indicate the region is doing pretty well in initiatives for mobile security, at least as compared with regions other than Asia. Respondents are also bullish about the cloud’s impact on security. South America trails only Asia in the frequency of security policy reviews. Outsourcing of various security functions, however, is more common among South American respondents than among respondents from any other region.

As spending stalls in Europe and safeguards weaken, some security practices are improving.

European respondents claim modest confidence in the effectiveness of their information security policies and activities. The region has a lower percentage of self-proclaimed front-runners than any part of the globe except the Middle East and South Africa. And as Winston Churchill might have put it, these executives have much to be modest about.

Spending remains in the doldrums. Expectations for budget growth are higher than North America, but Europe also leads every region except the Middle East and South Africa in respondents anticipating lower budgets (14%). Both security spending and security policies are less well-aligned with business goals than in other established regions.

Europe does lead the world in the percentage of firms that employ chief privacy officers or the equivalent, and also rates highly in terms of employing CISOs and chief security officers (CSOs). However, these executives report to the top of the house less often than in the three other leading regions. Europe scores poorly in terms of privacy technology and policy, and surpasses only the Middle East and South Africa in terms of fewer senior security executives reporting directly to the CEO.