Gartner has forecasted that global cybersecurity spending will climb to $96.3 billion in 2018, representing an increase of eight per cent from 2017.
Prime areas of growth include security services, network security equipment and infrastructure protection, with 2018 set to important in the history of cybersecurity.
Analysts at Gartner have recognised correlations between increased security spending and incoming regulation set for early 2018. GDPR is due to come into action in May of next year, with crippling fines the price for failing to comply.
Gartner has also looked beyond 2018, predicting that by 2020 over 60 per cent of organisations will be investing in an array of cybersecurity tools for data loss prevention and encryption.
Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner, said: “Overall, a large portion of security spending is driven by an organisation’s reaction toward security breaches as more high profile cyberattacks and data breaches affect organisations worldwide… Cyberattacks such as WannaCry and NotPetya, and most recently the Equifax breach, have a direct effect on security spend, because these types of attacks last up to three years.”
General cybersecurity awareness was driven by these major, global attacks of 2017, with WannaCry having a profound impact on the UK, where the NHS sustained devastating damage that reduced it to pen and paper organisation for an extended period of time.
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“Skill sets are scarce and therefore remain at a premium, leading organisations to seek external help from security consultants, managed security service providers and outsourcers… In 2018, spending on security outsourcing services will total $18.5 billion, an 11 per cent increase from 2017. The IT outsourcing segment is the second-largest security spending segment after consulting,” Mr Contu said.
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The skills problem is not expected to go away any time soon, with Gartner predicting that the 2019 spending on security outsourcing will equate to 75 per cent of the security software and hardware spend.
