COVID-19 has changed the way that most business owners look at a dollar. For months, businesses had been making strategic budget cuts to try to stay afloat. Cybersecurity has been the ultimate growth industry over the past several years, but in the face of the pandemic, the market for these products and services is seeing substantial retraction. In fact, Gartner estimated that in 2020, the cybersecurity industry would shrink by almost $7 billion.
While cutting costs and seeing areas where maybe you were overspending within the business is beneficial, cutting costs on cybersecurity could possibly damage your business detrimentally in the long run. It is absolutely the case that you shouldn’t slow your cybersecurity spending during these times. We’re not saying that just because we’re in the business of IT. We’re saying that because we have seen what happens when businesses don’t invest in their security. Today, we’ll take a look at the cybersecurity market and why it is important not to slow your cybersecurity spending if you can help it.
The Cybersecurity Market
As more people lean on technology, the cybersecurity industry has been a major beneficiary. The cybersecurity market was estimated to hit $170 billion in 2020 with the United States and Europe making up for nearly 70% of all spending in the area. The areas that have seen the most growth recently are the SIEM/security analytics market, threat intelligence, mobile security, and cloud security. In fact, cloud security has seen a 50% increase since 2016.
Why is all this necessary? Simple. Cyberattacks evolve as fast as the security systems in place to thwart them. This has led to massive growth for the better part of the past decade. Cyberattacks have also been up since COVID-19 started, read more about that in our blog. Since cyberattacks cost businesses nearly $500 billion a year, the large market growth is justified. New sectors like FinTech have pushed cybersecurity companies to innovate faster.
The COVID-19 Effect
The era of ridiculous cybersecurity spending was on its way out already with business owners and decision-makers finding that the return on their security investments wasn’t strong enough to facilitate limitless spending initiatives. What nobody who works in cybersecurity saw coming was a global pandemic that would force CIOs to cut into their budgets. We don’t endorse throwing money away. When you work with an MSP like Symmetric IT Group, we build a custom security stack with your business to save you money in the long run.
That’s not to say that businesses weren’t heavily investing in cybersecurity. They absolutely were, and are, but with the only metric to compare it against is a full-fledged data breach, optimistic executives see the value in spending that money on other things; and until something terrible happens, they will look continue appropriating those funds from cybersecurity to some other use. We understand it can be hard to spend a lot on it when the results aren’t visible in the forefront, but you will never regret stopping a cyberattack from occurring.
Cybersecurity is the Last Technology You Should Cut
Without strong cybersecurity protections, your business has an even smaller chance to survive an already risky situation. It doesn’t take much for an attack or breach to put a healthy business out of commission, cause layoffs, or at the very least, put financial strain on an organization. If it were to happen now, it will sting even more.
Let’s talk about your cybersecurity, and how to get the most protection for what you have. At Symmetric IT Group we understand everything a Tampa company needs to avoid cyberattacks and to minimize the impacts new threats can have on your business. Book a no-obligation call today.
