What’s fuelling the growth of cybersecurity in the APAC?

HACKERS and their techniques are evolving every day. They’re using a combination of traditional methods and emerging technologies to manipulate users and exploit system vulnerabilities, and they’re making billions doing it.

Businesses, obviously, are growing more concerned — as a successful hack not only means that they not only lose the trust of their customers but also causes them to attract scrutiny from regulators.

As a result, it’s only natural that spending on cybersecurity solutions increase.

According to IDC, security spending in the APAC is estimated to reach US$13.41 billion this year, an increase of 19.6 percent against 2017.

Spending on security-related hardware, software, and services to reach US$28.76 billion in 2022 with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 20.7 percent over the forecast period 2017-22.

More specifically, security-related services will be both the largest (US$5.3 billion this year) and the fastest growing (23.3 percent CAGR) category of security spending.

Managed security services, however, is forecast to be the largest segment within the services category, delivering almost 45 to 50 percent of the technology category total in 2022.

Integration services and consulting services will be responsible for most of the remainder.

It is also believed that security hardware is the second-largest category with spending expected to total US$4.9 billion this year alone.

Network security hardware will be the largest hardware segment throughout the forecast period, followed by data security hardware.

Most of the spend on network security hardware is forecast to be led by Unified Threat Management and Firewall technology hardware.

Cybersecurity spend by industry and geography

Given the risk to the banking and financial services ecosystem, the industry is expected to make the largest investment in security solutions, growing double-fold from US$2.1 billion in 2018 to US$4.5 billion in 2022.

Security-related services, led by managed security services, will account for more than half of the industry’s spend up to 2022 as well.

The second and third largest industries this year, which are discrete manufacturing and federal/central government (US$1.8 billion and US$1.3 billion in 2018, respectively) are led by investments in security-related hardware.

On the other hand, the industries that will see the fastest growth in security spending will be the resource industry (24.2 percent CAGR), state and local governments (24 percent CAGR), and utilities (22.9 percent CAGR).

In terms of geography, while China will only account for about 39.7 percent of the total security solutions spend this year, it is expected to gain traction by 2022 and account for almost 50 percent of spends.

China will show a record five-year CAGR of 26.6 percent as compared to the 16.2 percent recorded for the rest of the region by IDC.

Telecommunications and state and local governments are the two leading drivers of security spending in the Chinese market, collectively accounting for up to 35 percent of the overall spend in China this year.

Industrial spend in other parts of Asia is expected to be driven by strong demand in India, Singapore, and Malaysia.

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