India to be top spender on security solutions in APAC in 2021

Singapore: Driven by increased cloud adoption and massive work-from-home migration, Australia and India will account 26 per cent of the overall security spending in the Asia-Pacific region in 2021, according to the IDC.

Australia and India are the next two largest countries in terms of security spending due to the presence of large number of businesses catering to domestic as well as international customers.

Overall, spending on security hardware, services, and software in Asia/Pacific is expected to reach $23.1 billion in 2021 -- an increase of 12.6 per cent over the previous year.

IDC expects investment on security related products and services to grow at a five-year CAGR of 13.3 per cent over the forecast period (2019-24) and reach $35 billion by 2024.

"In Asia/Pacific, investments on security-related products and solutions (endpoint security, VPN, and firewalls) will experience double-digit growth in 2021 due to the increased spending by both governments and enterprises (particularly in the banking, telecom, and professional services industry)," explained Sharad Kotagi, Associate Market Analyst at IDC IT Spending Guides, Customer Insights ans Analysis.

The industries that are seeing the greatest increase in security spending this year are state/local government (18.5 per cent), transportation (13.9 per cent), and retail (13.7 per cent) -- driven by increased focus on data security, e-commerce, work from home, digitalization of logistic monitoring, payments, and contracts.

"While leading organisations are starting to adopt a more platform-based approach, the majority are still buying point-solutions to address specific concerns. This majority needs to change their mindset and invest more strategically into their security architectures," says Simon Piff, Vice President of Trust, Security, and Blockchain Research at IDC Asia/Pacific.

Security hardware will be the second largest of the security market, dominated by network security needs -- including firewalls, intrusion detection and prevention, unified threat management, and virtual private networks.

Large (500-1,000 employees) and very large businesses (more than 1,000 employees) will be responsible for two thirds of all security-related spending in 2021, said the IDC report.