News
High-Profile Breaches To Influence Security Spending in 2018
- By Chris Paoli
- January 02, 2018
Organizations worldwide are poised to increase their security spending in 2018 by 8 percent, driven by the raft of high-profile security blunders that made news headlines throughout the past year.
That's the upshot of recent data from research firm Gartner, which found that security spending for 2018 is on track to total $96.3 billion, compared to $89.1 billion in 2017.
"Overall, a large portion of security spending is driven by an organization's reaction toward security breaches as more high-profile cyberattacks and data breaches affect organizations worldwide," said Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner, in a prepared statement. "Cyberattacks such as WannaCry and NotPetya, and most recently the Equifax breach, have a direct effect on security spend, because these types of attacks last up to three years."
According to the report, the fast-growing security services segment will comprise the bulk of all security spending next year at an estimated $57.7 billion, up from 2017's $53.1 billion.
[Click on image for larger view.] Worldwide security spending by segment, in millions of current dollars. (Source: Gartner)
Spending on identity access management, infrastructure protection, network security equipment and consumer security software will also increase over the next 12 months.
The uptick in security spending will continue over the next few years, according to Gartner, with more than 60 percent of enterprises investing in data loss prevention, protection and encryption tools. This will be an increase over the current 35 percent of organizations spending on multiple tools today.
Another long-term trend is the move toward security automation, thanks to both the increasingly varied security landscape and a shortage of security skills among IT.
"Skill sets are scarce and therefore remain at a premium, leading organizations to seek external help from security consultants, managed security service providers and outsourcers," said Contu. "In 2018, spending on security outsourcing services will total $18.5 billion, an 11 percent increase from 2017. The IT outsourcing segment is the second-largest security spending segment after consulting."