No Cybersecurity Budget Cuts Projected for 2024

Cybersecurity budgets have largely been spared from the worst of corporate cutbacks, even though they’ve been affected by wider trims to company spending, according to James Rundle of The Wall Street Journal.

Inflation and concerns about a possible recession have made organizations cautious.  Some are pulling back on hiring, cutting headcount, or shutting operations down completely.

Security is one area where companies appear not to have significantly lowered spending amid a threat environment and significant attacks.

Nick Kakolowski, director of research at IANS Research, a cybersecurity advisory group says, “It’s telling that, in a year that was pretty economically challenging, security didn’t plummet in terms of spending.”

In a study with recruiting company Artico Search, IANS found that cyber budgets grew only modestly this year. According to a survey of 550 security executives, the average growth in cybersecurity budgets for 2023 was six percent, compared to double-digit increases in 2020 and 2021. As a portion of overall technology budgets, cyber accounted for 11.6 percent.

Cybersecurity’s importance to an organization isn’t only in preventing cyberattacks or safeguarding data, Kakolowski said, it has increasingly become a compliance concern. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s recently adopted regulations will require publicly traded companies to disclose details of cybersecurity incidents and cybersecurity risk management programs.

Increased cyberattacks and additional compliance burdens mean “you can only go so far in terms of cutting spending, even in a difficult economic situation,” Kakolowski said.

According to Gartner, general spending on cybersecurity is increasing dramatically. It will reach $215 billion next year, up 14.3% from $188 billion this year.

The areas of cloud security, data privacy and security, and application security have seen the largest share of spending growth. However, Gartner projects that all security areas will receive continuing investment next year.