Gartner has published a revised forecast for information security spending in 2020, predicting a much lower increase due to COVID19. A previous analysis of the information security market in December 2019 predicted an increase in spending of 8.7% in 2020, but Gartner has now revised the forecast downward and expects spending to reach 123.8% in 2020, an increase of just 2.4%.
Prior to the COVID19 pandemic, Gartner predicted IT spending would increase to $3.9 trillion in 2020, but that figure has now been reduced to $3.4 trillion. While there is not expected to be much in the way of growth in spending in 2020, some segments have been predicted to see significant growth. Cloud security is one such area. Gartner has predicted growth of 33.3% in 2020, bringing total spending up to $585 million. The increase in cloud security spending is largely driven by cloud access security brokers. Throughout the COVID19 pandemic, cloud-based secure email and web gateways have proven popular, accounting for 50% of cloud-based delivery model deployments. “Some security spending will not be discretionary and the positive trends cannot be ignored,” said Lawrence Pingree, managing VP at Gartner.
According to Gartner, cloud-based security has made some software solutions much more resilient to a downturn and will shield the security market from the full effect of a recession. Data security will see the second highest growth, with Gartner predicting an increase in spending of 7.2% in 2020, followed by a 6.2% increase in application security, and 5.8% growth in identity access management and infrastructure protection.
The sharpest decline in spending is for network security equipment, which is expected to be 12.6% lower than 2019, with spending on consumer security software expected to be down 0.3% on 2019.
Many companies will certainly be feeling the effect of COVID19 and are likely to see revenues far lower than predicted, but there have been some winners. The move to a largely remote workforce due to COVID19 has seen demand for network defense and remote access solutions increase, which has been good news for the likes of Cisco, Proofpoint, Fortinet, Zscaler, Microsoft, and Palo Alto Networks.
