Global cybersecurity spending within critical infrastructure sectors is forecast to reach $23 billion by the end of 2022, that’s growing at a 10 percent CAGR to reach $36.67 billion in 2027 — according to the latest worldwide market study by ABI Research.
“Businesses, industries, and in fact the entire world, have never been more connected than they are right now. They have also never been more at risk,” said Michela Menting, research director at ABI Research.
Organizations and key verticals continue to integrate technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), 5G wireless networks, and blockchain-based distributed ledgers — creating more points of connection, and more points of cyber-security vulnerability.
Critical Infrastructure Security Market Development
ABI Research has explored the cyber and digital security landscape in its entirety. Their analysis explores actionable cybersecurity trends and market growth forecasts from their ongoing research.
According to their study findings, the pervasive trends include:
Growing Presence of Mobile Identities: Driven by Digital Transformation and governments’ growing appetites to extend digital platform offerings, significant uptake of mobile identities has resulted.
Mobile identities, as a companion to physical documentation, once provisioned digitally via a dedicated application or web-based solution, enhance citizen use cases and allow for Identification (ID) verification using no superfluous citizen data.
The Emergence of Next-Gen Cryptography: The concern with quantum-safe technologies is becoming a high priority as the advent of attack-capable quantum computers emerges on the horizon.
The imminent release of draft quantum-resistant cryptographic algorithms — known as Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) by the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) — has security and technology vendors on the starting line, ready to integrate and deploy them in their product lines.
Central Banks Embracing Digital Currency: The digitization of a country’s fiat currency involves the central bank of the economy in question issuing electronic tokens, instead of the usual process of minting coins and printing paper bills.
There can be no doubt that recent years have seen the concept of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs) explored with great intent by many global economies.
Critical Infrastructures Primed to Adopt Enabling Cybersecurity Solutions: Industrial operators are increasingly incorporating disruptive technologies in their migration to Industry 4.0 solutions.
This is driving a better appreciation of cybersecurity requirements of enabling technologies with demand for fast user switching, hot patching, ICS cloudification, network probes, and secured PLC programming, among others.
Optimizing Data Security in Telematics to Enable Intelligence-Driven Monetization: Secure data management for automotive telematics is becoming increasingly important for vehicle manufacturers (VMs), Tier One suppliers, telcos, and insurance companies.
Almost every aspect of the software-defined vehicle is set to include constantly evolving cybersecurity technologies at the hardware, software, and network level, with telematics data security being one of the core operations.
The Drive Toward Embedded Cellular Connectivity Continues: With the hyper-connected world on the horizon, the drive toward embedded cellular connectivity continues, served via Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) form factors, such as eSIM software and Integrated SIM (iSIM).
From consumer electronics, cutting across a variety of device types such as smartphones, tablets, laptops, and wearables to myriad Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and IoT applications.
The Impact of a Remote Workforce: Distributed working environments affect both workers and assets (IT, OT, and the IoT). Secure connectivity and identity management have become key priorities in disparate and heterogeneous networks. All these elements are driving demand for hardware security.
Outlook for Critical Infrastructure Security Apps Growth
However, ensuring the protection of critical infrastructure assets is not just a hardware issue or a software issue, it’s a web of challenges and solutions spanning entire digital security ecosystems.
That said, I believe the demand to secure the enterprise distributed workforce will gain traction in 2022, as more organizations seek effective ways to protect their knowledge workers and frontline employees from cyber threats while away from corporate facilities.
Hybrid working models require CIOs, CTOs, and CISOs to reimagine their IT security posture. Remote working employees need new IT security solutions in order for Anywhere-Work initiatives to be truly successful. Therefore, the upside opportunities for growth in this space are very significant.