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As demand and adoption of the cloud continue to grow, there is corresponding growth in organizations spending more on technologies to secure cloud workloads, according to analyst firm Forrester.
Forrester’s Cloud Security Solutions Forecast 2018 to 2023 report estimates that by 2023 the global market for cloud security technologies will reach $12.7 billion, up from $5.6 billion in 2018. All that money isn’t going to flow into a single vendor, but rather multiple technologies as organizations increasingly rely on having several types of options for cloud security.
In this eWEEK Data Points article, we look at some of the key insights from the Forrester cloud security forecast.
Data Point No. 1: Public cloud use for mission-critical workloads is growing.
- Driving the overall market for cloud security is demand for the public cloud itself.
- 54% of IT decision makers surveyed by Forrester noted that their organizations are expanding their use of public cloud, which is more than a twofold increase from the 25% reported in 2015.
Data Point No. 2: Cloud-native security spending will continue to rise.
There are multiple segments within the cloud security market.
- Forrester estimated that the public cloud-native platform security segment represented over 70% of spending in 2018 at $4 billion.
- Looking forward, Forrester forecasts that public cloud-native platform security will be the fastest growing segment of the cloud security market and is expected to generate $9.7 billion in revenue by 2023.
Data Point No. 3: Organizations are using multiple cloud security tools.
Organizations are not using a single type of tool to protect cloud workloads and applications. Rather, the Forrester report found that cloud users are engaging with a mix of vendor, managed and cloud platform native tools.
Data Point No. 4: The majority of organizations are concerned about cloud risks.
Among the key drivers for continued spending in the cloud security space is concern from stakeholders about risks.
When asked whether or not they were concerned with potential risks stemming from the introduction of software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS), the majority (57%) of respondents indicated that they were in fact concerned.
Data Point No. 5: Financial services organizations spend the most on cloud security.
Growth in cloud security spending is expected across multiple industry verticals, though Forrester forecasts that financial services will spend the most, followed by professional services and telecommunications companies.
Data Point No. 6: Cloud security is apparently working.
Despite risks in the cloud, overall Forester found that cloud security is working.
- 37% of respondents said improved security was one of the key reasons to move to the public cloud.
- Breaches in the public cloud are few, with only 12% of breaches targeting public cloud environments, according to Forrester.
Sean Michael Kerner is a senior editor at eWEEK and InternetNews.com. Follow him on Twitter @TechJournalist.