Which areas of cybersecurity market will grow fastest in 2020?

Canalys forecasts that overall security market will grow by 2.5 per cent this year even under a 'worst case scenario'

Web and email security has been primed as the fastest-growing segment of the cybersecurity market in 2020 as end users redirect budgets to counter new threats facing home workers.

Global cybersecurity spending is set to grow in 2020, even under a ‘worst-case scenario', according to analyst Canalys.

Canalys expects the overall shipment value, covering endpoint security, network security, web and email security, data security, and vulnerability and security analytics, to range between $41.9bn and $43.1bn this year.

That represents growth of between 2.5 and 5.6 per cent, depending on how events pan out between now and the end of the year.

Cybersecurity "will remain a top priority for most organisations in 2020, as threats and vulnerabilities persist and compliance, regulations and ecosystem requirements strengthen", Canalys stressed.

Web and email security will enjoy growth of between 7.8 and 10.3 per cent, followed closely by vulnerability and security analytics (7.4 to 10 per cent), endpoint security (5.9 to 8.5 per cent) and data security (5.3 to 8.5 per cent).

The one blot in the cybersecurity copybook is network security, which makes up 36 per cent of the market.

Spending here will dip by between 0.9 and 4.7 per cent as customers defocus spending on traditional appliance-based perimeter defences, Canays predicted.

Organisations will have to boost spending in other areas of their security stack to address new vulnerabilities created by a more decentralised workforce, Canalys noted. This will incorporate web and email security, data security and vulnerability and security analytics, it said.

In western Europe, the proportion of workers working from home regularly will grow from 12 per cent pre-COVID to 28 per cent post-COVID, according to Canalys' latest predictions.

"The emergence of COVID-19 in January saw a surge in targeted phishing campaigns and malicious domains established to lure end users searching for information," said Ketaki Borade, Canalys research analyst.

"These fell once lockdown took effect. But hackers continue to target organisations and individuals by compromising unsecured and poorly trained remote workers via numerous vectors, including email, social engineering and RDP brute force attacks. Organisations will to have reassess changes to workflows, application use, customer engagement and training for cybersecurity awareness in a more virtual workplace."