Australian spending on information-security tools and services continues to accelerate and will grow at nearly twice the global rate this year, recent projections from Gartner have suggested.
The confluence of mobile, cloud, social and information trends is pushing more companies than ever before to address their information-security requirements and this is translating into a buoyant market here as well as abroad, the analyst firm reported in the leadup to Security and Risk Management summits to be held in Sydney, London and Dubai over coming weeks.
Australian information spending is expected to reach $A1.9 billion this year, representing an increase of 13.5 percent over last year. That's higher even than the 12.2 percent growth the firm predicted for 2013 in its previous market assessment – when Australian spending also outpaced the rest of the world.
Worldwide spending, Gartner forecast, will grow at 7.9 percent this year, reaching $US71.1 billion ($A76 billion), and a further 8.2 percent to $US76.9 billion ($A82.2 billion) in 2015.
“This Nexus of Forces is impacting security in terms of new vulnerabilities,” said Gartner research director Lawrence Pingree in a statement. “It is also creating new opportunities to improve effectiveness, particularly as a result of better understanding security threats by using contextual information and other security intelligence.”
Australian information-security spending was expected to a further 8.8 percent by 2015, when the local market – driven by increasing regulatory pressure through compliance with requirements such as the revamped Privacy Act – will be worth almost $A2.1 billion.
The Gartner analysis also included predictions for particular segments of the market, with around 30 percent of infrastructure-protection products to be purchased as part of a suite offering by 2015 and more than half of organisations using specialised security firms to improve their security by 2018.
By 2015, approximately 10 percent of IT security enterprise product capabilities will be delivered in the cloud, with more than 30 percent of security controls in the small to medium-sized business segment to be cloud based by 2015.
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