Coronavirus: Cyber security exhaust to sluggish in 2020

Analysts revise down earlier boost targets for security technology because the Covid-19 pandemic bites

Alex Scroxton

Alex Scroxton,
Security Editor

Published: 17 Jun 2020 12: 30

Excessive interrogate for cyber security products and companies and programs to present protection to cloud environments and distant workers for the duration of the Covid-19 coronavirus pandemic is conserving the sphere going, but this is a quick height and, in actuality, worldwide spending on security and threat management technology will sluggish this year, essentially essentially based on new statistics gathered by analysts at Gartner.

Support in December 2019, the market-watcher predicted that the cyber security market would develop by 8.7% in 2020, but at the halfway level of the year, it has now revised this all of the manner down to real 2.4% for a total market value of $123.8bn (£97.04bn/€108.4bn).

“Admire various segments of IT, we interrogate security shall be negatively impacted by the Covid-19 disaster,” talked about Gartner managing vice-president Lawrence Pingree. “Total, we interrogate a halt and a slit value of boost in both security software and products and companies for the duration of 2020.

“On the opposite hand, there are a pair of factors in favour of some security market segments, corresponding to cloud-essentially essentially based choices and subscriptions, being propped up by interrogate or offer model. Some security spending might maybe perhaps no longer be discretionary and the positive traits can not be no longer eminent.”

Gartner now predicts that the cloud security market will watch by some distance and away essentially the most tantalizing boost this year, at 33.3%, with most various markets all the arrangement by arrangement of the sphere, corresponding to data security, application security, and identification and safe entry to management, up somewhere between 5% and 10%. Gross sales of individual security software will drop by 0.2%, and community security gear – firewalls and intrusion detection and prevention – shall be down 12.6%, it says.

Pingree talked about the shift to cloud-essentially essentially based offer fashions, as evidenced within the statistics, made the security market severely more resilient to the Covid-19 downturn than various sectors. It eminent a median of 12% of total security deployments had been cloud-essentially essentially based closing year, and neatly over 50% in stable e mail and web gateway products and companies.

Piers Wilson, head of product management at Huntsman Security, talked about the soar in cloud- and distant working-linked deployments became runt shock as corporations rushed to transition to new fashions of working for the duration of the pandemic, but he talked about too many had no longer with out a doubt paid attention to whether or no longer they had been completely stable.

“Add to this the incontrovertible truth that spending on security within the put up-lockdown recession is seemingly to be decrease than deliberate and there could be a excellent storm for rising the threat of breaches taking region within the shut to future,” he added.

“Internal audits, consultancy initiatives and third-celebration assurance activities be pleased all been delayed, cancelled or rearranged, in a lot of circumstances into decreased timescales or with much less focal level.

“The actuality of belt-tightening and spending constraints is in stark battle to this elevated threat and the upper reliance in a lot of corporations on their technology platforms, for prospects, on-line gross sales and their private workers working. The threat and regulatory expectations be pleased no longer lessened, so security infrastructure and the processes which is seemingly to be in region to administer controls quiet be pleased to be sturdy.”

Wilson added: “It could perhaps perhaps watch as even if things be pleased quietened down from a cyber security standpoint as compared to the starting of the pandemic, but in point of fact that the threat is as high this day as it became three months ago – if no longer higher.”

Amanda Finch, CEO of the Chartered Institute of Knowledge Security Professionals (CIISec), talked about: “The slowdown Gartner has forecast exhibits us became to be expected, as organisations be pleased tightened their belts to safe by arrangement of this indeterminate interval of decreased exercise. Whereas it is positive to study some persevered boost all the arrangement by arrangement of 2020 – nonetheless tiny – a recession is quiet seemingly inevitable, given the financial harm the virus has already caused.

“Budgets shall be stretched even tighter within the shut to future and cutbacks in some sectors shall be brutal. Simultaneously, this received’t stop attackers, who will watch this as a golden alternative. As such, with this tightening of purse-strings, security teams need to manufacture more with much less. That will perhaps perhaps also impartial imply automating key industry processes, or counting on upstream carrier services that can perhaps present mandatory capabilities more payment-effectively.

“On the opposite hand, as these approaches can moreover open new avenues for attackers, security teams need to form ingenious new solutions to shut down these alternatives. This is in a position to perhaps also impartial be as easy as elevated collaboration, as security researchers use new solutions to part seemingly threats and processes – notably because the probabilities to meet in-individual are inclined to became rarer.

“Or it might perhaps perhaps also impartial imply automating as many security processes as seemingly, while quiet conserving an mandatory stage of human decision that removes the flexibility of attackers to foretell and title weaknesses.”

Stutter Continues Below