Worldwide spending on IT security products and services to reach US$86.4 billion in 2017: Gartner

Worldwide spending on information technology security products and services will reach US$86.4 billion in 2017, an increase of 7% over 2016, according to the latest forecast from Gartner, Inc.

Spending is expected to continue its growth to US$93 billion in 2018, the Stamford, Conn.-based research and advisory company said in a press release last week.

Within the infrastructure protection segment, Gartner forecasts fast growth in the security testing market (albeit from a small base) due to continued data breaches and growing demands for application security testing as part of DevOps, a software development and delivery process. Spending on emerging application security testing tools, particularly interactive application security testing, will contribute to the growth of this segment through 2021, Gartner said in the release.

Security services will continue to be the fastest growing segment, especially IT outsourcing, consulting and implementation services. However, hardware support services will see growth slowing, due to the adoption of virtual appliances, public cloud and software-as-a-service editions of security solutions, “which reduces the need for attached hardware support overall,” the company 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,” suggested Sid Deshpande, principal research analyst at Gartner.

“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. Organizations can improve their security posture significantly just by addressing basic security and risk related hygiene elements like threat centric vulnerability management, centralized log management, internal network segmentation, backups and system hardening,” Deshpande said in the release.

Other assumptions included in the latest IT security market forecast include:

• Renewed interest in the EU General Data Protection Regulation – This will drive 65% of data loss prevention buying decisions through 2018, Gartner suggested. The regulation “has caused an overall panic and unease among organizations in Europe, but will also have a global effect since multinationals will also need to adhere to the new law.” While organizations are working toward strengthening their knowledge of the regulation, those with some form of data loss prevention (DLP) already implemented are determining what additional capabilities they need to invest in (specifically, integrated DLP such as data classification, data masking and data discovery). In addition, organizations that do not already have strong DLP in place are looking to increase their capabilities;
• By 2020, 40% of all managed security service (MSS) contracts will be bundled with other security services and broader IT outsourcing (ITO) project – This is up from 20% today. To deal with the complexity of designing, building and operating a mature security program in a short space of time, many large organizations are looking to security consulting and ITO providers that offer customizable delivery components that are sold with the MSS, Gartner reported. As ITO providers and security consulting firms improve the maturity of the MSS they offer, customers will have a much broader range of bundling and service packaging options through which to consume MSS offerings. The large contract sizes associated with ITO and security outsourcing deals will drive significant growth for the MSS market through 2020; and
• By 2021, more than 80% of large businesses in China will deploy network security equipment from a local vendor – China’s recently approved cybersecurity law will contribute to further displacement of United States-manufactured network security products with local Chinese vendors. Despite an increase of 24% in 2016, Gartner expects end-user spending growth in Asia/Pacific to return to single-digit yearly growth from 2018 onward, as a result of a decline in average selling prices, due to the more competitive pricing of Chinese solutions.