Research: Increasing Threats, Federal Resource Shortages Drive $13 Billion Investment In Cybersecurity
Driven by a 445 percent increase in cybersecurity incidents since 2006, the shortage of qualified security professionals, and an increasingly complex and interconnected technology environment, INPUT forecasts federal investment in information security to increase to $13.3 billion by 2015 at a compound annual growth rate of 9.1 percent, nearly twice the rate of overall federal IT spending.
"There is a general consensus that the government has a lot of work to do to address weaknesses in its cyber security," said John Slye, INPUT principal analyst. "Over the last year, federal agencies have seen a 78 percent growth in cyber incidents. This demand for increased information security is greater than any other current technology, leaving it more immune to the recent federal budget cuts."
INPUT's new report, Federal Information Security Market, 2010-2015, details the numerous trends, drivers, and policies shaping the cyber security market.
A primary driver of increased spending is the ongoing shortage of professionals with specialized cyber security skills. The rapid growth in this market has created a shortage of resources among the federal agencies to keep up with the demand.
"While agencies continue to make incremental progress toward secure infrastructures; a lack of leadership, ambiguous roles, technical challenges, and workforce shortages inhibit the federal government from developing and implementing a cohesive, well-formed national cyber security strategy," said Angie Petty, INPUT principal analyst. "This creates a large opportunity for vendors to bring their combined agency knowledge and operational security expertise to the market."