EDITOR’S QUESTION
HOW HAVE BUSINESS
LEADERS ADAPTED
THEIR SECURITY
BUDGETS TO MANAGE
THEIR OPERATIONS
MOVING FORWARD?
Gartner, world-leading research and
advisory company, has forecasted
worldwide security and risk
management spending growth to slow but
remain positive in 2020.
Worldwide spending on information security
and risk management technology and
services will continue to grow through 2020,
although at a lower rate than previously
forecast, according to Gartner.
Information security spending is expected
to grow 2.4% to reach US$123.8 billion in
2020. This is down from the 8.7% growth
Gartner projected in its December 2019
forecast update. The Coronavirus pandemic
is driving short-term demand in areas
such as cloud adoption, remote worker
technologies and cost saving measures.
“Like other segments of IT, we expect
security will be negatively impacted by the
COVID-19 crisis,” said Lawrence Pingree,
Managing Vice President at Gartner.
“Overall, we expect a pause and a reduction
of growth in both security software and
services during 2020.
“However, there are a few factors in favour
of some security market segments, such as
cloud-based offerings and subscriptions,
being propped up by demand or delivery
model. Some security spending will not be
discretionary and the positive trends cannot
be ignored,” said Pingree.
The ongoing shift to a cloud-based delivery
model makes the security market somewhat
more resilient to a downturn, with an
average penetration of 12% of overall
security deployments cloud-based in 2019,
according to Gartner research. Cloudbased
delivery models have reached well
above 50% of the deployments in markets
such as secure email and web gateways.
Networking security equipment including
firewall equipment and intrusion detection
and prevention systems (IDPS) will be most
severely impacted by spending cuts this year.
Consumer spending on security software is
also forecast to decline in 2020.
“
NETWORKING
SECURITY
EQUIPMENT
INCLUDING
FIREWALL
EQUIPMENT
AND INTRUSION
DETECTION AND
PREVENTION
SYSTEMS (IDPS)
WILL BE MOST
SEVERELY
IMPACTED BY
SPENDING CUTS
THIS YEAR.
34 INTELLIGENTCIO www.intelligentcio.com