The market is expected to rise to $60 billion this year alone, up 8.4% from $55 billion in 2011.
The global economic slowdown has been putting pressure on IT budgets, but security is expected to remain a priority through 2016, with IT outsourcing (managed security services), secure Web gateway (appliance), and security information and event management (SIEM) emerging as the fastest-growing security segments. Demand for cloud-based security is also impacting a number of key security markets, and above-average growth is expected for this new delivery model, Gartner said.
"The security infrastructure market is expected to experience positive growth over the forecast period, despite risks of further economic turbulence," said Lawrence Pingree, research director at Gartner. "Results from the 2012 annual Gartner CIO survey show increased prioritization for security compared with 2011 and results from Gartner budgeting surveys published in June 2012 underline the fact that organizations globally are prioritizing on security budgets."
Overall, 45% of enterprise survey respondents said that they expected a security budget increase, 50% expected their budget to remain the same and only 5% expected their budget to decrease in 2012.
This pattern varied little across regions, Gartner pointed out, although some countries in emerging regions demonstrated a much-higher expectation of an increase.
"Although security remains fairly resilient in tough times, the prolonged financial crises seen in the U.S. and Europe have had some impact on IT security spending globally but to a lesser extent for emerging countries, such as Brazil, China and India," said Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner.
Gartner expects demand for security products and services to be driven by the persistent threat landscape and influenced by the increasingly targeted and evolving attack patterns that are growing in sophistication. Within this environment, organizations will continue to seek the expertise and help of security technology and service providers to mitigate risks and reduce security vulnerabilities.
"Our most current forecast reflects our expectation that the various markets within security infrastructure will be affected to different degrees. In 2012, the market contributing most to overall growth, excluding exchange rate effects, is security services, followed by security software," said Pingree. "We expect current market trends will keep security infrastructure growth at between 9 percent and 11 percent from 2011 through 2013, but we are factoring in a higher degree of caution in terms of buying behavior."