Coronavirus: Cyber security spend to slow in 2020

There is currently high-demand for cyber-security services and systems to protect cloud environments and remote workers during the pandemic. However, according to new statistics gathered by analysts at Gartner, this is a short-term peak.

Back in December 2019, the market-watcher predicted that the cyber-security market would grow by 8.7% in 2020, but at the halfway point of the year, it has now revised this down to just 2.4% for a total market value of $123.8bn (£97.04bn/€108.4bn).

“Like other segments of IT, we expect security will be negatively impacted by the Covid-19 crisis,” said Gartner managing vice-president Lawrence Pingree. “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.”

Gartner now predicts that the cloud security market will see by far and away the greatest growth this year, at 33.3%, with most other markets within the sector, such as data security, application security, and identity and access management, up somewhere between 5% and 10%. Sales of consumer security software will drop by 0.2%, and network security equipment – firewalls and intrusion detection and prevention – will be down 12.6%, it says.