Canalys projected total spending in 2023 to hit US$223.8bn in the best-case scenario, with growth in the delivery of cybersecurity services outpacing product shipments. Persistent heightened threat levels will keep cybersecurity investment a high priority for organisations, but not all planned projects will be signed off as budget holders are under pressure to scrutinise spending, Canalys predicted.
The analyst said that spending among governments and enterprises will rise, but investment by smaller businesses will weaken as economic conditions deteriorate.
“Ransomware remains the biggest threat to organisations from an operational, financial and brand perspective,” said Matthew Ball, chief analyst at Canalys.
“But the emergence and abuse of generative AI models, such as ChatGPT, will increase the risk to another level in 2023. This will enable and accelerate the creation of malicious code on an industrial scale by more threat actors and increase the frequency and range of attacks.
“Organisations are already struggling to deal with current threat levels and cannot afford to cut back on spending as it will leave them even more vulnerable. Instead, they will need to work more closely with channel partners to make smarter investments.”
Srikara Upadhyaya, research analyst at Canalys said that implementing Zero Trust architectures will be the ‘central theme’, driving more consulting engagements for channel partners and creating opportunities around deploying multiple products from different vendors while reducing operational complexity via managed services.
“Overall, more than 90 per cent of total cybersecurity product and services spending will go through channel partners in 2023,” Upadhyaya concluded.
The forecast supports recent data from Veeam’s Data Protection Trends Report 2023, which found that ransomware prevention and remediation is currently the biggest hindrance to the digital transformation efforts of 38 per cent of UK & Ireland firms.
“It may not come as a surprise that 73 per cent of businesses experienced at least one [ransomware] attack in the past year, and 18 per cent suffering a shocking four or more, according to our Data Protection Trends Report 2023,” said Alex Walsh, channel and alliances director UK & Ireland at Veeam.
Walsh added that the findings indicate that there is a disconnect between how quickly businesses need their systems to be recoverable and how quickly it happens in reality, an issue reported by 83 per cent of UK and Ireland firms.
“Furthermore, 81 per cent of businesses in this region reported a ‘protection gap’ between how much data they can afford to lose in a cyberattack and how frequently IT teams protect their data,” he said.
“Considering how interconnected modern businesses are, it’s vital that they do all they can to protect themselves, their customers and partners, including adopting Modern Data Protection approaches. A key enabler to this is the channel ecosystem, which can provide organisations with incomparable expertise and insights to help define their future approaches to data protection, and find modern solutions that suit their needs.”