Global Security Products and Services Spending to Hit USD 83.5 Billion

Worldwide spending on security-related hardware, software, and services is forecast to reach USD 119.9 billion in 2021, IDC. With nearly every industry investing in security solutions to meet a wide range of threats and requirements, spending is expected to achieve a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9.6 percent over the period 2016–2021. Worldwide spending on security products and services will total USD 83.5 billion in 2017, an increase of 10.3 percent over 2016.

Security spending is expected to be somewhat evenly spread across four industry sectors in 2017: distribution and services (USD 19.7 billion), public sector (USD 18.6 billion), manufacturing and resources (USD 16.4 billion), and financial (USD 16.3 billion). By 2021, however, the financial sector is forecast to move ahead of manufacturing and resources due to a 2016–2021 CAGR of 10.2 percent. Similarly, public sector security spending will nearly pull even with distribution and services by 2021 with a CAGR of 10.3 percent. The fastest growing sector over the 5 year forecast period will be infrastructure with a CAGR of 11.8 percent. In addition to being among the industries spending the most on security solutions in 2017, federal/central government and banking will be two of the industries that will see the fastest growth in security spending over the 5-year forecast, with CAGRs of 10.9 percent and 10.7 percent, respectively. The industry that will see the fastest growth is telecommunications, with a CAGR of 12.6 percent. This growth will enable telecommunications to become the fourth largest industry in terms of total security spend in 2021, moving ahead of the process manufacturing and professional services industries.

More than 80 percent of security spending in 2017 will go to services and software. Services spending will be led by two of the largest technology categories – managed security services (USD 15.25 billion) and integration services (USD 12.5 billion). Software spending will be focused on three categories – endpoint security, identity and access management, and security and vulnerability management – that will make up more than 75 percent of the software total this year. Hardware spending will be significantly smaller throughout the forecast, dominated by network security solutions (USD 13.7 billion in 2017). In addition to being the two largest technology categories, managed security services and network security will also be the fastest growing categories during the 2016–2021 forecast with CAGRs of 14.3 percent and 11.4 percent, respectively.