Cybersecurity’s Big Market Boom Reaches $75B

The size of the global cybersecurity market continues to skyrocket — and the latest research from Forbes shows there is no signs of it slowing down anytime soon.

Over the weekend, Forbes released its cybersecurity year in review for 2015, The Business of Cybersecurity: 2015 Market Size, Cyber Crime, Employment, and Industry Statistics, which comprises the latest data on the year’s cybersecurity spending and projections for market growth looking forward to 2020.

According to the latest forecast from Gartner, worldwide spending on cybersecurity in 2015 is expected to reach $75.4 billion, representing a 4.7 percent spike in growth compared to 2014.

Many factors are reportedly driving this significant growth, including government and law enforcement initiatives, high-profile data breaches and increased legislation.

“Interest in security technologies is increasingly driven by elements of digital business, particularly cloud, mobile computing and now also the Internet of Things, as well as by the sophisticated and high-impact nature of advanced targeted attacks,” Elizabeth Kim, research analyst at Gartner, said in a statement.

Research from MarketResearch.com forecasts the global cybersecurity market to jump from $106.32 billion in 2015 to $170.21 billion by 2020. In North America alone, the market intelligence products and services provider predicts the cybersecurity market will increase at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.32 percent over the period of 2014-2019.

The growing complexities and sophistication of cyberattacks and threats have prompted government agencies, financial, retail, telecom, and manufacturing sectors to invest in enhancing their cybersecurity efforts in order to protect critical information and assets.

Among the major security technologies, antivirus and anti-malware solutions are expected to gain the highest market share through 2020, MarketResearch.com confirmed. But companies are also seeking solutions to address monitoring, detecting, reporting and mitigating cyber threats, in hopes of protecting the sensitive nature of IT systems and consumer data

Forbes’ year in review also referenced the recent PwC Global State of Information Security Survey 2016 which found cyber insurance to be one of the fastest growing sectors within the insurance market.

PwC’s “Insurance 2020 & beyond: Reaping the dividends of cyber resilience” report found that the cyber insurance market is expected to reach $7.5 billion in annual premiums by the end of 2020 and at least $5 billion by 2018.

Paul Delbridge, insurance partner at PwC, noted that as the attention on safeguarding against damaging cyber attacks grows, policyholders may begin to question the true value they are receiving from their coverage. This could be especially true when insurers offer high coverage costs, imposed limits and strict terms and conditions.

“If insurers continue to simply rely on tight blanket policy restrictions and conservative pricing strategies to cushion the uncertainty, they are at serious risk of missing this rare market opportunity to secure high margins in a soft market. If the industry takes too long to innovate, there is a real risk that a disruptor will move in and corner the market with aggressive pricing and more favorable terms,” Delbridge said in a press release announcing the report’s findings.

Cybersecurity within the financial services industry have also had a big year, with the “Banking & Financial Services Cybersecurity: U.S. Market 2015-2020 Report,” published by Homeland Security Research Corp. (HSRC), predicting the market will reach $9.5 billion in 2015.

If the forecast holds true, it will make financial services cybersecurity the largest non-government cybersecurity market. The report also expects the market to exceed $77 billion in cumulative revenues between 2015 and 2020, which would also make it the fastest growing non-government cybersecurity market as well.

Even big banks such as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo are all expected to make hefty large investments into cybersecurity in order to safeguard their businesses.

Forbes reported that these four large financial institutions will collectively spend nearly $1.5 billion on their cybersecurity initiatives each year. Roughly 15 percent of spending throughout the entire financial sector will be made up of the cybersecurity budgets of just those four banks.