Analysts forecast global cybersecurity spending slowdown next year

While not an absolute slowdown in the growth of security spending, the market analyst firm Gartner does expect the rate of growth in enterprise information security spending to cool in the near future.

According to a news release issued last week, the firm estimates 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. However, that growth is only anticipated to reach 8.7 percent in 2019 and reach $124 billion.

What’s driving the demand for information security gear and services? According to Gartner, it’s cyber attack detection and response, as well as privacy. In a separate survey conducted in the fall of 2017, Gartner questioned 480 participants from Australia, Canada, France, Germany, India, Singapore, the U.K. and the U.S. on their existing and planned security spending.

That survey found that the top motivators for security spending include security risks, business demands, and changes in industry. That survey also found that privacy concerns will continue to rise and will prove to be a catalyst for about 10 percent of enterprise security investments through 2019, with identity efforts and data loss prevention being among the primary benefactors.

High profile attacks and rising technological driven risks will also drive investments into data breach detection and response capabilities. Of course, regulatory mandates can’t be overlooked, and despite the EU’s Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) going into effect in May of this year, Gartner estimates at least 30 percent of organizations will still spend on consulting and implementation services related to GDPR through 2019.

Another significant driver is proving to be digital transformation, Gartner found. As enterprises turn to cloud services, IoT, and other technologies that are driving their transformations they need to protect their new critical operations from disruption and intellectual property and regulated data from compromise.

Finally, security capabilities delivered as a service are on their way to surpassing on-premises security deployments. According to the Gartner survey mentioned earlier, many respondents cited buying security information and event management (SIEM) software in the next two years. These deployments will be hybrid, comprising of both cloud and on-premises aspects.

“On-premises deployments are still the most popular, but cloud-delivered security is becoming the preferred delivery model for a number of technologies,” said Gartner analyst Sid Deshpande.