Revenue Growth for Security in 2023 to Continue Through 2028

Worldwide revenue for security products totaled $106.8 billion in 2023, an increase of 15.6% compared to 2022. And revenue growth was strong across the board with all six product categories registering double-digit year-over-year growth, according to new data from IDC.

"Security is a board-level conversation; cyber risk is business risk. Thus, security spending remains strong and carries with it a certain level of immunity from the negative effects of economic uncertainty. In fact, the emergence of GenAI and other AI technologies are contributing to increased budgets for security offerings in 2024," said Frank Dickson, group vice president for Security & Trust at IDC. "GenAI brings pressure to increase cybersecurity budgets on two fronts: to secure an organization's development and use of GenAI applications and to use GenAI assistants to uplevel security analysts, in both efficacy and efficiency."

The largest technology category in 2023 was Network Security with worldwide revenues totaling $27.4 billion. Nearly three-quarters of this revenue came from four secondary markets: Firewall/Unified Threat Management (UTM); Secure Web Gateway; Web Application and API Protection; and Virtual Private Network (VPN)/Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). The Network Security category includes five other secondary markets: Segmentation; Infrastructure Protection; Intrusion Detection Systems/Intrusion Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS); Cloud Access Security Broker; and Network Sandboxing.

The next largest technology categories were Endpoint Security and Security Analytics with 2023 revenues of $21.6 billion and $20.0 billion respectively. Revenue in the Endpoint Security segment was divided between the Modern Endpoint and Consumer Digital Life Protection secondary markets. The Vulnerability Management and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) secondary markets accounted for nearly two-thirds of the Security Analytics revenue, with the remainder coming from the Network Security Analytics, Orchestration and Automation Tools, and Cloud-native XD markets.

The remaining technology categories – Identity and Access Management, Information and Data Security, and Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP) – delivered $37.8 billion in combined revenue for 2023. The technology category with the greatest year-over-year revenue growth in 2023 was Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms at 31.5%, followed by Identity and Access Management at 21.4%. The other categories all saw annual revenue growth in the mid-to-upper teens.

In terms of deployment, the public cloud continued to capture a growing share of security product spending. In 2023, nearly two-thirds of all security products revenue came from public cloud deployments with the remainder coming from on-premise deployments and hardware appliances. The top five companies in the security products market in 2023 were Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Gen Digital, and Fortinet with combined revenue of $28.8 billion or nearly 27% of the overall market.

IDC forecasts the global security product market will continue to see double-digit growth over the next five years with total revenue reaching $200 billion in 2028. The fastest growing product categories over the 2024-2028 forecast period will be Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms, Security Analytics, Identity and Access Management, and Information and Data Security, all with compound annual growth rates (CAGRs) in the teens or higher.