Gartner says detection and response is top security priority for organisations in 2017

Organisations are transforming their security spending strategy in 2017, moving away from prevention-only approaches to focus more on detection and response, according to Gartner, Inc. Worldwide spending on information security is expected to reach $90 billion in 2017, an increase of 7.6 per cent over 2016, and to top $113 billion by 2020. Spending on enhancing detection and response capabilities is expected to be a key priority for security buyers through 2020.

Preventing security incidents

"The shift to detection and response approaches spans people, process and technology elements and will drive a majority of security market growth over the next five years," said Sid Deshpande, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner. "While this does not mean that prevention is unimportant or that Chief Information Security Officers (CISOs) are giving up on preventing security incidents, it sends a clear message that prevention is futile unless it is tied into a detection and response capability."

Mr Deshpande said that skills shortages are further driving spending on security services. Many organisations lack established organisational knowledge of detection and response strategies in security because preventive approaches were the most common tactics for decades. Skill sets are scarce and, therefore, remain at premium, leading organisations to seek external help from security consultants, managed security service providers (MSSPs) and outsourcers.

Data security

The need to better detect and respond to security incidents has also created new security product segments, such as deception, endpoint detection and response, software-defined segmentation, cloud access security brokers, and user and entity behaviour analytics. These new segments are creating net new spending, but are also taking spend away from existing segments such as data security, enterprise protection platform (EPP) network security and security information and event management.

On the services side, the emergence of specialised managed detection and response services is a threat to traditional MSSPs. The rising number of point solutions in the security market that address detection and response is creating sprawl and manageability issues for CISOs and security managers, driving spending for management platforms and services that are better integrated with adjacent markets.

Preventive security controls

As enterprises shift toward balancing prevention with newer detection and response approaches, CISOs are changing how they measure the success of their security strategy. All security investments are being measured on how they contribute to the shift in mindset. Even preventive security controls, such as EPP, firewalls, application security and intrusion prevention systems, are being tweaked to provide more intelligence into security operations, analytics and reporting platforms.

"CISOs are keen to communicate the return on investment of their security strategy in terms of the business value associated with quick damage limitation, in addition to threat prevention and blocking," said Lawrence Pingree, Research Director at Gartner. "The key enabler for CISOs in this endeavour is to get visibility across their security infrastructure to make better decisions during security incidents. This visibility will enable them to have a more strategic and risk-based conversation with their board of directors, CFO and CEO about the direction of their security programme."

Gartner analysts will provide additional analysis on IT security trends at the Gartner Security & Risk Management Summits 2017 taking place in National Harbor, Maryland, Tokyo, Mumbai, India, Sao Paulo, Sydney and London.