The rise and rise of cybersecurity spending globally
Businesses aren’t investing in cybersecurity because they want to; they’re doing it because they have to.
Every week, another cyberattack makes headlines. A data breach here, a ransomware attack there—businesses, governments, and even hospitals are getting hit. And with AI making cyber threats more sophisticated, companies can’t afford to treat cybersecurity as just another IT expense. It’s now a business-critical investment.
That urgency is driving record spending. According to IDC, global security investments will grow 12.2% in 2025, reaching $377 billion by 2028. This isn’t just a short-term reaction—cybersecurity budgets are rising year after year because the risks keep escalating. If anything, threats are becoming harder to detect, more damaging, and costlier to recover from.
Per the report, the bulk of this spending will come from the U.S. and Western Europe, but the fastest growth is happening elsewhere. Latin America, Central & Eastern Europe, and the Middle East & Africa are stepping up their defences. In the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region, for example, governments and enterprises aren’t just investing in security solutions—they’re prioritizing cybersecurity education and training to build long-term resilience.
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The biggest area of investment? Security software, which will see 14.4% growth in 2025 as companies double down on cloud security, identity management, and security analytics to detect and shut down attacks before they happen. Managed security services are also expanding as businesses look for outside help to stay ahead of threats without stretching their internal teams too thin.
Looking at it from the industry standpoint, banks, telecom providers, government agencies, capital markets, and healthcare organizations will spend the most. But some of the fastest-growing cybersecurity budgets belong to capital markets (+19.4%), media & entertainment (+17.1%), and life sciences (+16.9%)—industries that are rapidly digitizing and becoming prime targets for hackers.
And it’s not just the big players taking security seriously. Small and medium-sized businesses—once the easiest targets—are ramping up their defences, realizing that as they go digital, they’re just as vulnerable as the giants.
At this point, businesses aren’t investing in cybersecurity because they want to—they’re doing it because they have to. Cyber threats are evolving, and the only way to stay ahead is to keep investing, keep innovating, and never let your guard down.
