By : Basel Khaled

Worldwide end-user spending on information security is projected to total $212 billion in 2025, an increase of 15.1% from 2024, according to a new forecast from Gartner, Inc. In 2024, global information security end-user spending is estimated to reach $183.9 billion.

“The continued heightened threat environment, cloud movement and talent crunch are pushing security to the top of the priorities list and pressing chief information security officers (CISOs) to increase their organization’s security spend,” said Shailendra Upadhyay, Senior Research Principal at Gartner. “Furthermore, organizations are currently assessing their endpoint protection platform (EPP) and endpoint detection and response (EDR) needs and making adjustments to boost their operational resilience and incident response following the CrowdStrike outage.”

The adoption of AI and generative AI (GenAI) continue to increase investments in security software markets like application security, data security and privacy, and infrastructure protection. Through 2025, GenAI will trigger a spike in the cybersecurity resources required to secure it, leading to an expected 15% increase on security software spending (see Table 1).

Table 1. Information Security End-User Spending by Segment, Worldwide, 2023-2025 (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

Source: Gartner (August 2024)

Since the release of GenAI, attackers are increasingly employing tools along with large language models (LLMs) to carry out large-scale social engineering attacks, and Gartner predicts that by 2027, 17% of total cyberattacks/data leaks will involve generative AI.

As organizations continue to move to the cloud, Gartner analysts expect an increase in cloud security solutions, and the market share of cloud-native solutions will grow. The combined cloud access security brokers (CASB) and cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP) market is estimated to reach $8.7 billion in 2025, up from forecasted $6.7 billion in 2024.

The global skills shortage in the cybersecurity industry is a major factor driving investment in the security services market (security consulting services, security professional services and managed security services) which is expected to grow faster than the other security segments.

In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, end-user spending on information security is forecast to total $3.2 billion in 2025, an increase of 14% year on year (see Table 2).

Table 2. Information Security End-User Spending by Segments in MENA, 2023-2025 (Millions of U.S. Dollars)

Source: Gartner (August 2024)

“The continued growth in security spending in the MENA region is primarily driven by the constantly evolving regulatory environment and the rise in cyberattacks,” said Upadhyay. “Furthermore, digitalization and cloud migration are broadening the threat landscape for enterprises. Consequently, CISOs in the region are focusing on ensuring compliance with rapidly changing regulatory and privacy frameworks, countering persistent threats as well as addressing C-suite and board-level executives concerns on organizational resilience and cybersecurity posture.”

Gartner clients can read more in “Forecast: Information Security, Worldwide, 2022-2028, 2Q24 Update.”

Learn more in the complimentary Gartner webinar “How to Plan, Prepare and Build a Cybersecurity Strategy for the Future.”