Security spending in the region to reach $1 billion in 2014: Gartner

In the Middle East, security has not evolved as a strategy and still remains as point solutions, according to Gartner.

“In this region, the focus is still on keeping the bad guys out. Security organisations and solutions are not mature as compared to Western Europe or North America,” said Eric Paulak, Managing VP of research at Gartner.

At its  Security and Risk Management Summit being held in Dubai, the research firm said the Middle East and North Africa spending on information security will reach $1 billion in 2014, an increase of eight percent over 2013. Network security equipment and security services together will account for approximately 75 percent of enterprise spend in 2014, and this trend is expected to continue through 2018.

“In response to the recent spate of security threats faced by organisations in the Middle East, a majority of the security projects currently underway and in the pipeline are focused on improving the security operations and incident response capabilities of enterprise infrastructure,” said Paulak.

The market segments that benefit from this trend are network security, security implementation and security consulting. Globally, managed security services forms around 35 percent of all security services spending, but in the MENA region this is much lower at 16 percent. Analysts said this indicates that MSSP as a deployment model is not as mature or sought after in the region compared to more developed IT markets.