Although organisations worldwide are putting maximum effort into preventing cyberattacks, the global cybercrime cost remains enormous compared to total cybersecurity spending – over the past six years, the global cybercrime cost has grown 12 times faster than total cybersecurity spending, totaling $9,2-trillion in 2024.
And, even more worrying, this difference could become bigger in the future.
According to research from Stocklytics.com, the annual growth rate in the cybersecurity market is expected to halve and drop to 6,3% by 2028.
Organisations will spend over $185-billion on cybersecurity tools and services this year, but it`s still just a drop in the ocean compared to the total cost of cybercrime. However, there is another worrying trend: while the cost of cybercrime continues rising, global cybersecurity spending is slowing down and, according to a Statista Market Insights survey, this trend will continue until the end of the decade.
Global economic instability and rising inflation have caused many organisations to tighten their budgets – including on cybersecurity. Also, companies are increasingly looking to optimise existing cybersecurity infrastructure rather than investing in new, expensive solutions.
The surging trend of moving to cloud solutions environments has also affected cybersecurity spending because cloud providers such as Amazon Web Services (AWS) and Microsoft Azure offer built-in security features, reducing the need for traditional security solutions. These factors have all led to a new trend of making smarter, more efficient cybersecurity spending rather than increasing the budget year-over-year and causing a considerable slowdown in the market.
According to Statista, the annual growth rate in the global cybersecurity market will drop from 11% in 2024 to 6,35% in 2029, the lowest point in almost a decade. Consequently, the annual spending on cybersecurity services and solutions will increase by 46% to $271-billion in the next five years, down from a 60% growth rate in the five years leading to 2024.
The annual growth rate in the security services segment is forecasted to drop from 7,8% to 3,7%. Cybersolutions will see a similar decline, with the growth rate falling from 14,6% in 2024 to 8,6% in 2029.
The slowdown in cybersecurity spending is even more worrying when looking at the expected cybercrime cost by 2029.
According to Statista, cyberattacks including ransomware, data breaches, cyber espionage, and phishing will inflict damages totaling over $15,6-trillion by 2029 – almost 70% more than this year. This cost includes stolen money, damage and destruction of data, lost productivity, theft of intellectual property, theft of personal or financial data, post-attack disruption to the ordinary course of business, restoration and deletion of hacked data and systems, and reputational harm.
Cybersecurity spending will increase by 46% to $271-billion in the next five years. This means the total cybersecurity spending five years from now will be 57 times smaller than the expected annual cybercrime cost.