As news of cyberattacks and ransomware continue to clog up the news headlines, business leaders are opening up their pocket books and are upping their spending on cybersecurity, according to a new report from Gartner.
The research firm on Monday said worldwide spending on IT security and risk management technology and services is expected to grow 12.4% to reach $150.4 billion in 2021. Spending in that area grew at a rate nearly half of that in 2020.
According to Gartner, analysts say the strong growth rate reflects the continued demand for remote work technologies and securing cloud environments.
What the report didn’t mention was the number of high-profile cybersecurity incidents reported over the last few months that had IT and incident response teams scrambling to lock down corporate environments from nation-state actors and ransomware groups.
“Organizations continue to grapple with the security and regulatory demands of public cloud and software as a service,” said Lawrence Pingree, managing research vice president at Gartner. “Looking ahead, we’re seeing early market signals of growing automation and further adoption of machine learning technologies in support of AI security. To combat attacks, organizations will extend and standardize threat detection and response activities.”
Gartner’s 2021 CIO Agenda Survey released in October 2020 found that cybersecurity was the top priority for ne spending, with 61% of the more than 2,000 CIOs surveyed saying they were increasing investment in cybersecurity in 2021.
Spending on things like cloud security, security services, infrastructure protection, identity access management, data security and more are all expected to grow by at least 7.4%, according to Gartner.
Here’s a look at the firm’s research into security spending by segment.
| Market Segment
|
2020 | 2021 | Growth (%) |
| Application Security | 3,333 | 3,738 | 12.2 |
| Cloud Security | 595 | 841 | 41.2 |
| Data Security | 2,981 | 3,505 | 17.5 |
| Identity Access Management | 12,036 | 13,917 | 15.6 |
| Infrastructure Protection | 20,462 | 23,903 | 16.8 |
| Integrated Risk Management | 4,859 | 5,473 | 12.6 |
| Network Security Equipment | 15,626 | 17,020 | 8.9 |
| Other Information Security Software | 2,306 | 2,527 | 9.6 |
| Security Services | 65,070 | 72,497 | 11.4 |
| Consumer Security Software | 6,507 | 6,990 | 7.4 |
| Total | 133,776 | 150,409 | 12.4 |
According to that table, the fastest growing market segment is cloud security, with a particular focus on cloud access security brokers (CASB) due to the growing popularity of using non-PC devices for interacting with core business processes, which creates risk that can be mitigated with a CASB.
How is your organization prioritizing spending on security in 2021? Take a look at this research and ensure that you’re advocating for spending on the right cybersecurity solutions.
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