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Amid a climate of regular ransomware attacks and tightening legislation, Australia's enterprise cyber security spending is set for a boom over the next five years.
According to new findings by analyst firm GlobalData, Australia's private sector cyber security investment is set to reach $4.6 billion by 2025, growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.7 per cent between 2020 and 2025.
Driving local IT security spending is the rise in volume and sophistication of security breach incidents at enterprises across industries, the report claimed.
These include the ransomware attack on healthcare service operator Eastern Health in March 2021 and data breaches at Tasmanian Ambulance in January 2021, Northern Territory Government in February 2021, Western Australian Parliament in March 2021 and Service NSW in 2020.
On top of this, enterprise customers are having to consider the Security Legislation Amendment (Critical Infrastructure) Bill 2021, which will bring in a raft of new security requirements.
According to GlobalData, this will provide a "strong impetus" for implementing efficient IT and data security solutions in critical sectors.
These include: financial markets, communications, defence, energy, health care and medical, space tech, transport, higher education and water and sewage, among others.
“With most enterprises in Australia continuing with work-from-home [strategies] considering the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic and extended lockdowns seen in recent times across major cities in the country, the demand for security solutions that can protect enterprise IT infrastructure against security threats that may arise from mobile devices and networks used in remote working environments will grow in the short to medium period," said Saurabh Daga, technology analyst at GlobalData.
Broken down into segments, security software is set to increase at the fastest CAGR of 6.5 per cent over the forecast period of 2020-2025.
This will be driven by the increasing demand for identity and access management, end point security platforms and security intelligence and management solutions, all of which have risen to the foreground due to home working.
Managed security services, meanwhile, will account for the largest share of the overall enterprise security spending opportunity through the forecast period, meaning bigger opportunities ahead for the channel community.
This demand stems from a lack of skilled information security resources and the complexity of deploying and managing advanced security solutions will encourage enterprises to adopt managed security services, GlobalData said.
“While the large enterprise segment will jointly account for largest share of the total enterprise security spending in Australia through the forecast period, the combined spending from micro, small and medium enterprises will increase at a marginally faster CAGR of 6.8 per cent over the forecast period," Daga added.
