Global spending on information security has been forecasted to total $212 billion (£160bn~) in 2025—an increase of 15.1% over this year—according to a new prediction from Gartner, the technological research and consulting company.

Specifically, security services spend is projected to grow by 15.6% in 2025, while security software and network security will see a 15.1% and 13.1% rise respectively, all contributing to the combined figure of 15.1% growth.

Shailendra Upadhyay, senior research principal at Gartner, noted that “The continued heightened threat environment, cloud movement and talent crunch are pushing security to the top of the priorities list and pressing chief information security officers (CISOs) to increase their organization’s security spend.”

The global skills shortage in the cybersecurity sector is a major driving investment in the security services market (i.e. security consulting services, security professional services, and managed security services). Gartner noted that, in light of this significant skills gap, the security services market is expected to grow faster than the other security segments.

The adoption of AI and, more specifically, generative AI (GenAI), also continue to increase investments in software markets like application security, data security privacy, and infrastructure protection. Through 2025, GenAI is set to trigger a spike in the cybersecurity resources required, evident by the forecasted growth in security software spend.

The research firm touched on the fact that, since the release of GenAI, attackers are increasingly employing tools along with large language models (LLMs) to facilitate large-scale social engineering attacks. Gartner predicts that, by 2027, a stark 17% of total cyber-attacks will involve GenAI.

Finally, as organisations continue to move to the cloud, it’s expected that an increase in cloud security solutions—and the market share of cloud-native solutions—will grow, too. The combined cloud access security brokers (CASB) and cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP) market is estimated to reach $8.7bn (£6.5bn~) in 2025. This is up from the forecasted $6.7bn (£5bn~) in 2024.

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Gartner’s latest forecast has been released just a day after DIGIT reported on a new cybersecurity report covering the first half of 2024, which found a concerning rise in vulnerabilities.

Specifically, the report from cyber-threat intelligence firm Flashpoint revealed an 11% rise in cyber vulnerabilities in H1 2024, alongside an increase in info-stealing malware, with more than 13 million devices infected.

Based on data, trends and emerging cyber-threats observed between January 1 to June 30, Flashpoint discovered that 45% of these vulnerabilities found so far were marked as high or critical exposures, according to the Common Vulnerability Score System v3 (CVSSv3).