UK To Spend £3bn On Security In 2011

Companies in the UK are expected to spend almost £3 billion on measures to protect their systems, this year. This figure is set to increase at a rate of ten percent per annum for the next five years according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers report.

According to the report, which offers a breakdown and analysis of deal activity in the Cyber Security market over the past three years, the UK is the third largest spender. The US dominates, making up half  the global IT security market, and is followed by Japan. The top ten security deals to have taken place in the period have only featured US and UK companies.

$10bn in six months

While global cyber security deals since 2008 were valued at $22 billion in total , the first half of 2011 saw 37 deals worth more than $10 billion, a 70 percent  increase compared to full year 2010.

This sharp rise has been triggered by growing high-profile cyber threats as well as an increasing awareness among both organisations and consumers of accelerating breaches and attacks.

Barry Jaber, PwC’s UK-based Security Industry Leader believes that the market shows an attractive growth outlook, and given its fragmentation, deal activity in cyber security is expected to continue to grow.

“IT companies are making acquisitions to differentiate their offerings while defence firms continue to do deals to diversify away from shrinking defence budgets,” he said.

Noting some of the key drivers underpinning growth in cyber security spending, Jaber said that the pervasive use of mobile devices and cloud computing has created more vulnerabilities, thus triggering a rise in cyber threats from new players and new threat vectors. The combination of increased awareness of threats, a more demanding regulatory environment, and product and service innovation of security solutions, has also contributed to this growth.

In seperate research PwC has also found that cybercrime is now the third most common type of economic crime in the UK.