End-users in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region will increase their spending on cybersecurity and risk management by 11.2 percent to $2.8 billion in 2022, according to US technology research firm Gartner.
The recent study revealed that cloud security is poised to record the highest growth at 33.8 percent and hit $27 million this year, followed by data security, which is set to grow by 21.9 percent.
“Cyber-attacks have become more sophisticated over the last two years, and the MENA region is not immune,” said Shailendra Upadhyay, principal research analyst at Gartner.
“The malicious nature of the attacks has forced security leaders in the region to relook at their security strategy and increase their security and risk management spending to make their businesses future-ready,” he added.
This year, end-user spending is forecast to increase across all segments of information security and risk management, driven by the region’s strategic focus on public cloud growth, which is intended to smoothen its shift to a ‘data-driven economy’ from an ‘oil-exporting economy’.
“The identity and access management (IAM) market will continue to grow in the long term as organisations become more aware of the criticality of identity controls within their larger security architecture. Growth in cloud computing has shifted security from perimeter-based approaches to identity context-based approaches. This, and other longer-term growth drivers, such as identity being foundational to digital business transformation and optimisation initiatives and compliance and regulatory pressures, should continue to propel demand for IAM solutions,” said Upadhyay.
The pandemic has accelerated digital transformation and SaaS adoption – the primary growth drivers for the overall cloud market – as organisations looked to support remote workers and meet consumer demands.
As businesses continue to adopt and expand SaaS usage, the report stated that cloud access security broker (CASB) will be one of the key products for addressing the demand and will witness substantial growth going into 2023.
