Global end-user cybersecurity spending is expected to grow by just over 15% year-on-year through 2025, reaching a new high of $212 billion (£160.5 billion), according to the latest forecast from analysts at Gartner.
Much of this increase is due to the adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) and Generative AI (GenAI) in particular is reaching the mainstream, forcing investments in application security, data security, privacy measures and network infrastructure protection, Gartner said.
Since GenAI made its spectacular debut in 2021 and 2022, with the launch of tools such as DALL-E and ChatGPT, threat actors have increasingly used tools using large language models (LLM) to improve their social engineering attacks.
Gartner now predicts that by 2027, a few years from now, 17% of cyberattacks or data breaches will involve an element of GenAI. However, according to Shailendra Upadhyay, senior research director, these new technologies won’t necessarily be the only factors at play.
“The increasingly intense threat environment, the move to the cloud and the talent shortage are pushing security to the top of the priority list and pushing CISOs to increase their organization’s security spending,” Upadhyay said.
“In addition, organizations are currently assessing their endpoint protection platform and endpoint detection and response needs and making adjustments to strengthen their operational resilience and incident response following CrowdStrike Outage” he said.
Cloud to increase share of security budgets
Elsewhere, Gartner analysts predict that cloud security spending and the overall market share of cloud-native cyber products and services will continue to grow.
Analysts expect the combined market for cloud access security brokers and cloud workload protection platforms to reach $8.7 billion by 2025, up from $6.7 billion forecast this year.
The global skills shortage in the security sector will also play a major role in investment in the services market, with consulting, professional and managed services expected to grow faster than any other cybersecurity segment.
Decompose
Gartner divides the security market into three distinct pillars: security software, security services, and network security.
Of these, security software will account for the largest share of spending next year, increasing 15.1% to $100.7 billion, up from $87.5 billion in 2024 and $76.6 billion in 2023. Security services will increase 15.6% to $88.1 billion in 2025, up from $74.5 billion in 2024 and $65.6 billion in 2023. Network security will increase 13.1% to $24.8 billion in 2025, up from $21.9 billion in 2024 and $20 billion in 2023.
Gartner Clients You can access the full forecast hereand the organisation is also encouraging security managers based in the UK and Europe to register to attend its Security and Risk Management Summit next month in London.
