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To No One’s Surprise, Worldwide Spending on Cybersecurity is Up: Cybersecurity Trends

Can you guess what the global spend on cybersecurity will be this year?  Gartner recently provided a forecast, see how close you can come to guessing the amount.  The answer is at the bottom of this post – the picture of this well-known astronomer should provide some clue.

In their press release from August announcing the forecast and report (I would quote the title, but that would give away the answer), Gartner forecasted 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. Spending on emerging application security testing tools, particularly interactive application security testing (IAST), will contribute to the growth of this segment through 2021.  So, if you want to get into a career growth area, security testing sounds like a good one.

Gartner says that 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 (SaaS) editions of security solutions, which reduces the need for attached hardware support overall.

Another factor that will lead to increases in security spend, according to Gartner: The EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has created renewed interest, and will drive 65 percent of data loss prevention buying decisions today through 2018 (not to mention some eDiscovery buying decisions too).  And, if you don’t think your firm or organization is subject to GDPR, you may want to read this.

However, by 2021, Gartner reports that more than 80 percent 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 U.S.-manufactured network security products with local Chinese vendors. Despite an increase of 24 percent 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 (ASPs), due to the more competitive pricing of Chinese solutions.

So, how big is the global cybersecurity market?  According to Gartner, worldwide spending on information security products and services will reach $86.4 billion in 2017, an increase of 7 percent over 2016, with spending expected to grow to $93 billion in 2018.  In other words, “billions and billions” as famous astronomer Carl Sagan was known to say.

More detailed analysis is available to Gartner clients in these two reports: Forecast Analysis: Information Security, Worldwide, 1Q17 Update and It’s Time to Align Your Vulnerability Management Priorities With the Biggest Threats.

So, what do you think?  Has your organization increased spending on cybersecurity products and services? Please share any comments you might have or if you’d like to know more about a particular topic.

Disclaimer: The views represented herein are exclusively the views of the author, and do not necessarily represent the views held by CloudNine. eDiscovery Daily is made available by CloudNine solely for educational purposes to provide general information about general eDiscovery principles and not to provide specific legal advice applicable to any particular circumstance. eDiscovery Daily should not be used as a substitute for competent legal advice from a lawyer you have retained and who has agreed to represent you.

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