Safety at a premium as security market goes big
You may recall that a couple of weeks ago I wrote about some research from Canalys that forecast the large amount of revenue – $488 billion – managed services were expected to generate this year.
I was, understandably, impressed. Now, a new piece of research from the same company has predicted that the cyber security market will reach $360 billion by 2027 and that the partner channel will benefit massively because “more than 90% of it is sold and/or serviced by the ecosystem”.
According to Canalys: “Total growth of security software, hardware, and services over the next four years averages 12.8% (per year) while services alone has a CAGR of 15.1%.”
Totting up the figures in the graphic accompanying the LinkedIn post regarding the research by Canalys chief analyst, channels, partnerships & ecosystems Jay McBain I find that the cyber security market in 2023 has a value of around $220 billion. That’s pretty big as it is.
So increasing that market size further is clearly another cause for celebration.
And yet.
Am I the only one who looks at those figures and thinks “how on earth have we arrived at the point where it passes without much remark that we are spending more than $220 billion on cyber security and expect that figure to increase to $360 billion in the space of four years?”
Is it heretical to question why we so blithely accept that increases in spending on cyber security should be as natural as the sun rising tomorrow and the day after?
It’s easy to understand why we do but that doesn’t mean we should. I know this might not be a very popular stance to take, especially when channel partners look set to have a $324 billion cut of the market by 2027, but it does bear teasing out a little bit.
First of all, it’s worth remembering, because people never cease of telling us, that IT budgets are not infinite. If you’re spending more on one thing, you’re very likely to be spending less on something else. So if you’re spending more to protect your technology and the things it connects with and enables, that means you’re spending less on the technology itself.
Is that a good thing? Well, it seems to be a truism that the less you spend on technology, the less secure it becomes over time and the more you need to spend on protecting it up to the point where you have to replace it because it’s too expensive to protect.
It’s not just the technology. You may be forced to spend more time and effort making it fit your cyber security priorities over and above making it more effective and efficient. It may have to become less user friendly and the user experience might need to be curtailed to make it more secure.
No doubt that’s a price worth paying when you consider the awful alternatives and devastating consequences of a successful cyberattack or security breach, but just how high should that price become? When does it become too much?
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