Gartner: Security Spending Grows to $86.4bn in 2017

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According to Gartner global spending on security products and services is to reach $86.4bn in 2017-- a 7% increase over 2016, before growing to $93bn in 2018.

SecurityThe analyst predicts fast growth in the security testing market (if from a small base), the result of 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), should contribute to further growth through 2021.

Security services remain the fastest growing segment, especially IT outsourcing, consulting and implementation services. However hardware support services should slow down due to the adoption of virtual appliances, public cloud and software as a service (SaaS) editions of security solutions reducing the overall need for attached hardware support.

"Rising awareness among CEOs and boards of directors about the business impact of security incidents and an evolving regulatory landscape have led to continued spending on security products and services," the analyst says. "However, improving security is not just about spending on new technologies. As seen in the recent spate of global security incidents, doing the basics right has never been more important. Organisations can improve their security posture significantly just by addressing basic security and risk related hygiene elements like threat centric vulnerability management, centralized log management, internal network segmentation, backups and system hardening."

Another market driver is the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR). Gartner forecasts it will drive 65% of data loss prevention buying through 2018 across both Europe and the rest of the world, since multinationals need to adhere to the new law. Companies with or without a form of data loss prevention (DLP) are looking to strengthen their capabilities, especially integrated DLP such as data classification, data masking and data discovery.

Meanwhile, 40% of all managed security service (MSS) contracts will be bundled with other security services and broader IT outsourcing (ITO) projects by 2020, up from 20% in 2017, as large organisations are looking into customisable delivery components sold with the MSS. As ITO providers and security consulting firms mature their MSS offering, customers will have a broader range of bundling and service packaging offerings, driving "significant" growth for the MSS market through 2020.

Go Gartner Forecast Analysis: Information Security WW Q1 2017 Update