Banking Sector Leads UK To Top Five In Security Spending This Year

Spending on IT security is set to rise 9.4 percent to $103.1 billion (£78bn) this year, led by the banking, manufacturing and government sectors, amidst a climate of heavy investment to ward of a range of threats, according to new research.

IDC found that the UK’s banking sector would make the country one of the world’s biggest markets for security-related hardware, software and services, following only the US, China and Japan.

State and local government security spending is expected to show the fastest growth this year, with a projected year-on-year growth of 11.9 percent, followed closely by telecommunications at 11.8 percent and the resource industries with 11.3 percent.

“This spending growth will make telecommunications the fourth largest industry for security spending in 2022 while state/local government will move into the sixth position ahead of professional services,” IDC said.

‘Wide range of threats’

In its latest Worldwide Semiannual Security Spending Guide the firm said it sees industries continuing to invest “heavily” in security over the next several years to meet “a wide range of threats and requirements”.

IDC forecast worlwide IT security spending would rise 9.2 percent from 2018 to 2022 to reach $133.8bn in 2022.

This year the firm expects banking, discrete manufacturing and federal and central governments investing more than $30bn combined into security systems, followed by the process manufacturing, professional services and telecommunications sectors, each of which are expected to spend more than $6bn this year.

“Regardless of industry, these technologies remain an investment priority in virtually all enterprises, as delivering a sense of security is everyone’s business,” said IDC vice president Jessica Goepfert.

Managed services on the rise

IDC sees managed security services as the largest technology category this year, taking in more than $21bn for around-the-clock monitoring and management of security operations centres.

Such services are the largest spending category for each of the top five industries this year, followed by network security hardware, integration services and endpoint security software.

Managed security services is also expected to show the fastest growth, at 14.2 percent, followed by security analytics software at 10.6 percent and network security software at 9.3 percent.

Analyst Martha Vazquez said organisations were “struggling” to maintain in-house security operations, in part due to staff shortages, and were turning to managed services as a result.

Asia-Pacific growth

Government spending is set to be one of the largest categories in the two largest single markets, the US and China, along with discrete manufacturing in the US and the telecommunications sector in China, while Japan’s market is likely to be dominated by consumers.

IDC said the US and Western Europe would deliver two-thirds of the world’s security spending this year, but that the biggest growth is expected to come from China, the rest of the Asia-Pacific region excluding Japan, and Latin America, with each of those regions set to show double-digit growth up  to 2022.

Large and very large businesses are expected to account for two-thirds of security spending this year, followed by small and medium businesses, with $26bn in combined spending, and consumers with nearly $5.7bn.