Gartner projects that global spending on information security and risk management technology and services will grow 2.4% in 2020, to $123.8 billion. Just six months earlier, Gartner was predicting 8.7% growth. COVID-19 will hamper the information technology sector in general, and cybersecurity is no expectation, said Gartner managing vice president Lawrence Pingree, in a statement.
“We expect a pause and a reduction of growth in both security software and services during 2020,” Pingree said. “However, there are a few factors in favor 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.”
Hardest hit by spending cuts will be firewall equipment, intrusion detection and prevention systems (IDPS) and other networking security equipment, according to Gartner. Security software is also projected for a drop in customer spending. That said, the pandemic has taught several cybersecurity lessons, writes Verizon public sector counsel David Kessler in a Compliance Week op-ed.
The crisis underscores the prevalence of phishing attacks, the importance of employee cybersecurity training and the need to secure collaboration tools such as virtual meeting software, Kessler says. Schools should adapt to long-distance learning and hospitals to telemedicine, he contends. He adds that organizations should adopt the National Institutes of Standards and Technology (NIST) Cybersecurity Framework, which offers guidance around five functions: “Identify, Protect, Detect, Respond & Recover.”
One of the biggest threats to cybersecurity comes from inside an organization, a trend that the coronavirus may only exacerbate. According to Verizon’s 2020 data breach report, 30% of data breaches last year were due to inside actors, up from 2018. Bryan Sartin, executive director of security professional services at Verizon Business, tells Industry Week that he expects that share to rise this year due to increased remote work.