MENA information security spending to reach $1.3 billion in 2016, says Gartner

Middle East and North Africa (MENA) spending on information security technology and services is on pace to reach $1.3 billion in 2016, an increase of 8% over 2015, according to Gartner.

Increased awareness about the business impact of security incidents is causing organisations to focus their security strategy on detection and response approaches, which is driving this strong growth in the security market.

“Enterprises in MENA are the targets of some of the world’s most advanced attacks, as well as the highest rate of attacks. Organisations are trying to increase detection, blocking, and advanced defences while faced with limited availability in the security workforce,” said Greg Young, Research vice President at Gartner. “Large organisations in the Middle East and North Africa continue to invest in building out security operations capabilities either in house or by leveraging external services offered by managed security services providers (MSSPs). I’m encouraged by the regional security cooperation as evidenced through standards and CERT coordination.”

Gartner recommends that organisations recognise the inevitable adoption of cloud and virtual IT and shift their defences to an adaptive security architecture. Organisations should look for, and secure, shadow IT whereby IT has been adopted outside the normal IT procurement and management processes.

“Targeted attacks, ransomware, and denial of service attacks are the most relevant threats to enterprises today, however they are enabled by failing patch vulnerabilities and overloading security personnel with alerts,” said Young.

Other trends in the information security market that form assumptions behind Gartner’s latest forecast include:

• By 2019, 30% of large enterprises will increase their security consulting services spending as they transition into digital business

• The Internet of Things (IoT) and mobility security will contribute less than 5% of consumer security software spending by 2018

• By year-end 2018, over 50% of IoT device manufacturers will remain unable to address product threats emanating from weak authentication practices

• 99.9% of attacks will be based on product vulnerabilities that were known for at least a year.

The latest forecast for information security is available to Gartner clients in the report ‘Forecast: Information Security, Worldwide, 2014-2020, 2Q16 Update