Security Spending Forecast to Hit $119B by 2021

Digital transformation is a driver that will push worldwide spending on global security products and services to $119.9 billion by 2021, according to research by IDC.

With almost every industry vertical investing in security to thwart a wide range of threats and attacks, IDC's Worldwide Semiannual Spending Security Guide forecast a 9.6% compound annual growth rate for security spending from 2016 to 2021.

For this year, worldwide spending on security products and services will total $83.5 billion, which was a 10% increase over last year.

"Three overarching trends are driving security spending: a dynamic threat landscape, increasing regulatory pressures, and architectural changes spurred by digital transformation initiatives," said Sean Pike, program vice president for IDC's security products and legal, risk, and compliance programs, in a prepared statement. "While IDC expects spending to continue growing, organizations are actively searching for product and service efficiencies that maximize spend in order to fully address such complex challenges."

IDC's Eileen Smith, program director of customer insights and analysis, said that ever-changing security threats, fear of data breaches and regulatory compliance issues would continue to drive security investments across all industries.

On a worldwide basis, banks, discrete manufacturers, and federal/central government agencies will spend the most on security products and services during the forecast period, according to Smith, and combined will account for 30% of the global spending this year.

More than 80% of this year's security spending spree will go to services and software. Software spending for security is focused across three main areas: endpoint security; identity and access management; security and vulnerability management. Those three areas will account for more than 75% of software security spending in 2017.

Security services spending is paced by two of the largest technology categories -- managed security services ($15.25 billion) and integration services ($12.5 billion). Managed security services and network security are projected to be the fastest growing categories during the 2016-2021 forecast period with compound annual growth (CAGR) rates of 14.3% and 11.4%, respectively.

By contrast, hardware spending will be significantly smaller throughout the forecast, dominated by network security solutions ($13.7 billion in 2017).

The largest region for spending on security products and services will be North America with a total of $37.8 billion this year. Asia/Pacific -- excluding Japan -- will see the biggest growth in security spending over the forecast years with a five-year CAGR of almost 20%, according to IDC .

— Mike Robuck, Editor, Telco Transformation