The demand for more security solutions will be driven by the continued adoption of remote working which most requires cloud solutions. Spending on this space is expected to reach $23.1 billion by this year, according to the latest (International Data Corp.) IDC Worldwide Semiannual Security Spending Guide.

IDC expects investment in security-related products and services to grow at a five-year compound annual growth (CAGR) of 13.3% over the forecast period (2019-2024) and reach $35 billion by 2024. The Worldwide Security Spending Guide quantifies the global revenue opportunity for both core and next-generation security purchases with detailed forecast data for security spending by 20 industries across nine regions and 43 countries.

“(The year) 2020 defined the importance of digital for everyone globally, but it also highlighted shortcomings in security strategies,” said Simon Piff, VP of Trust, Security, and Blockchain Research, IDC Asia/Pacific. “While leading organizations are starting to adopt a more platform-based approach, the majority are still buying point-solutions to address specific concerns. This majority needs to change their mindset and invest more strategically into their security architectures.”

Global spending on security products, services to reach $125.2B in 2020

Spending on security solutions to reach $133.7 billion in 2022, says IDC

Key industries such as banking, telecommunications, and government are seen to be the players to drive the growth and will constitute half of the security spending, mainly because these are also the industries often targeted by cybercriminals.

Endpoint security

“The industries that are seeing the greatest increase in security spending this year are state/local government (18.5%), transportation (13.9%), and retail (13.7%),” IDC said in its report. This is being attributed to the increased focus on data security, e-commerce, work from home, digitalization of logistic monitoring, payments, and contracts, and in playing catch up due to underspending in the area in previous years.

Space will be dominated by network security (firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, unified threat management, and virtual private networks or VPN) with hardware coming in the close second. Endpoint security and Identity and Digital Trust Software is seen to deliver more than half of the overall security software spend in 2021.

Endpoint security will address the concerns of work-from-home devices connected to unsecured home networks, which earlier reports said have been a vulnerability most attackers have exploited.

Large (500-1,000 employees) and very large businesses (more than 1,000 employees) will be responsible for two-thirds of all security-related spending in 2021. These two segments will also see the strongest spending growth over the forecast period with CAGRs of 12.7% and 13.7%, respectively. This growth is driven by the large workforce and the adoption of emerging technologies by large organizations. Medium (100-499 employees) and small businesses (10-99 employees) is expected to spend more than $5 billion combined on security solutions in 2021.