Cybersecurity spending is going to surge in 2025 – and AI threats are a key factor

Cybersecurity spending will continue rising in the year ahead amidst heightened concerns about the threat of AI, according to new research from Gartner.

Research from the consultancy expects global information security end-user spending to reach $183.9 billion in 2024, rising by 15.1% to $212 billion in 2025.

A key factor in this spending growth, Gartner said, is the continued adoption of generative AI tools that are boosting investments in security software markets.

Application security, data security, and infrastructure protection efforts are fueling this investment spree, the study noted, triggering a further spike in spending next year.

There's already been a surge in the use of large language models (LLMs) and associated tools to carry out large-scale social engineering attacks, Gartner said, and the consultancy predicts that 17% of cyber attacks or data leaks will involve generative AI by 2027.

Meanwhile, as organizations continue to move to the cloud, Gartner said it expects an increase in cloud security solutions, with the market for cloud native solutions also predicted to grow.

The combined cloud access security brokers (CASB) and cloud workload protection platforms (CWPP) market is estimated to reach $8.7 billion in 2025, up from a forecasted $6.7 billion in 2024.

"The continued heightened threat environment, cloud movement and talent crunch are pushing security to the top of the priorities list and pressing chief information security officers to increase their organization’s security spend," said Shailendra Upadhyay, senior research principal at Gartner.

"Furthermore, organizations are currently assessing their endpoint protection platform and endpoint detection and response needs and making adjustments to boost their operational resilience and incident response following the CrowdStrike outage."

Cybersecurity spending soars across the board

Investment in the security services market - covering security consulting services, security professional services, and managed security services - is expected to grow faster than other security segments. This, Gartner said, is largely driven by the global skills shortage in the cybersecurity industry .

Gartner’s research aligns with previous analysis of cybersecurity spending published earlier this year. A study from IDC showed the threat from AI is expected to fuel a 12.3% rise in security spending across the continent.

"The increasingly sophisticated tools available to cyber criminals — now including generative AI — are transforming security from a technical requirement to a key strategic factor for companies across all industries to stay competitive on the market," said Stefano Perini, research manager for European data and analytics at IDC.

Perini noted that spending is heightened in a number of key industry verticals, such as banking, defense, telecommunications, and government; all of which are industries where cyber attacks can have “dire consequences on both business operations and the organization’s reputation”.