GDPR and market boom to send IT security spending soaring – Gartner

Gartner has revealed that IT security spending will soar to $86.4 billion worldwide in 2017, driven by factors including GDPR and market growth.

This colossal figure is a seven per cent increase from the spending accrued in 2016, and it is expected that this rate will continue to new heights of $93 billion in 2018.

High profile data breaches have accelerated board level understanding of IT security, and the negative impact both financially, and in terms of business reputation. Gartner also pointed to the big regulatory changes such as GDPR as a major driver of spending.

The research and advisory firm forecasts that security testing will be a focus for those ramping up the spending, as new applications and are brought on board to bring organisations into line. In line with this, Gartner predicts that security services will continue to be the fastest growing segment.

Sid Deshpande, principal research analyst at Gartner, said: “Rising awareness among CEOs and boards of directors about the business impact of security incidents and an evolving regulatory landscape have led to continued spending on security products and services.”

“However, improving security is not just about spending on new technologies. As seen in the recent spate of global security incidents, doing the basics right has never been more important. Organisations can improve their security posture significantly just by addressing basic security and risk related hygiene elements like threat centric vulnerability management, centralised log management, internal network segmentation, backups and system hardening,” said Deshpande.

READ MORE: Countdown to GDPR: Everything you need to know with just one year to go

GDPR is now considerably less than a year away, and it threatens to deliver potentially crippling punishment to organisations that fail to comply with the new standards of data protection.

A new Data Protection Bill was recently issued in the UK, which proves the government is taking the issue very seriously, and it will also pave the way for the impending arrival of GDPR.