Gartner Forecasts Strong Growth for Information Security Spending

Worldwide spending on information security products and services will reach more than $114 billion in 2018, an increase of 12.4 percent from last year, according to the latest forecast from Gartner. In 2019, the market is forecast to grow 8.7 percent to $124 billion.

“Security leaders are striving to help their organizations securely use technology platforms to become more competitive and drive growth for the business,” said research director Siddharth Deshpande. “Persisting skills shortages and regulatory changes like the EU’s Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are driving continued growth in the security services market.”

At least 30 percent of organizations will spend on GDPR-related consulting and implementation services through 2019. Implementing, assessing and auditing the business processes related to the GDPR are expected to be the core focus of security service spending for EU-based organizations, and for those whose customers and employees reside there.

Privacy concerns are also becoming a key factor. Gartner believes privacy concerns will drive at least 10 percent of market demand for security services through 2019 and will impact a variety of segments, such as identity and access management (IAM), identity governance and administration (IGA) and data loss prevention (DLP). Risk management and privacy concerns within digital transformation initiatives will drive additional security service spending through 2020 for more than 40 percent of organizations, according to the report.

Services will represent at least 50 percent of security software delivery by 2020. The report also says security-as-a-service is on the way to surpassing on-premises deployments, and hybrid deployments are enticing buyers.

Results are supported by data from a survey of 480 respondents from eight countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S.

Channel Impact^®
Driven partly by high-profile data breaches; detection, response and privacy concerns are strengthening customer demand, as well as opportunities for channel partners.