Gartner: Cybersecurity Spending Worldwide to Hit $86.4 Billion This Year

The global information security market for 2017 will grow by 7% over last year with spending to reach $86.4 billion, according to a new forecast by Gartner.

Gartner said spending for security products and services will reach $93 billion in 2018, with security services still the most rapidly growing segment of the market.

"Rising awareness among CEOs and boards of directors about the business impact of security incidents and an evolving regulatory landscape have led to continued spending on security products and services," said Sid Deshpande, principal research analyst at Gartner. "However, improving security is not just about spending on new technologies ... Organizations can improve their security posture significantly just by addressing basic security and risk related hygiene elements like threat centric vulnerability management, centralized log management, internal network segmentation, backups and system hardening."

The European Union's General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) will propel 65% of data loss prevention purchases through 2018.

And by 2020, some 40% of managed security service (MSS) contracts will be combined with other security services and IT outsourcing projects, and increase from the current 20%, according to the consultancy.

Read more on Gartner's market forecast here.