According to recent research published by Gartner, anxiety about the new GDPR will accelerate security spending. Global spending on information security will hit $86.4 billion this year, a 7% hike over the prior year. And it will reach $93 billion in 2018, according to a forecast by Gartner Inc.
The GDPR, which will take effect in May 2018, has created an “overall panic and unease” in European companies and Gartner explains that the GDPR has created renewed interest, and will drive 65 percent of data loss prevention buying decisions today through 2018.
The new EU regulation is also applicable to non-EU companies exporting to the EU markets, and this is one of the factors that is driving demand for information security services amongst groups from the US exporting to the EU. As in the past, the security services segment is expected to grow at the fastest rate. Security services include IT outsourcing, consulting and implementation services.
A principal research analyst at Garter, Sid Deshpande, stated that the Rising awareness among CEOs about the business impact of security incidents and an evolving regulatory landscape have led to continued spending on security products and services. But Deshpande cautions that improving security is not just about purchasing new technologies. Instead, companies must also address basic security and risk related hygiene elements like threat centric vulnerability management, centralized log management, internal network segmentation, backups and system hardening.