Indian cybersecurity services expected to grow to $7.6 bn by 2022: DSCI

The Indian cybersecurity services industry is expected to grow to about $7.6 billion in 2022 from $4.3 billion at present. At a growth rate of about 21 per cent, its is expected to be worth $13.6 billion by 2025, according to a report by the Data Security Council of India.

Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, cybesecurity is attracting a lot of attention from company boards and governments alike. The global cybersecurity services' market is expected to reach about $89 billion by 2022, a growth rate of 10 per cent. Managed security services and system integration are the most attractive service lines, while identity and access management, big data analytics and cloud security are expected to garner high demand, the report added.

The current estimated employee base of cybersecurity services companies is 110,000 which is expected to grow in the future, according to Rama Vedashree CEO, DSCI. More than 35 per cent companies covered by the report are re-skilling half of their security workforce. About 60 per cent of the respondents have prioritized hiring skilled talent for performing security operations.

The report covers more than 70 cybersecurity companies, large, small and medium, boutique firms and original equipment manufacturers whose combined contribution to the market is 80 per cent of industry revenue.

“As cyber risks have gone up significantly, one thing that will make a difference today is cybersecurity. While companies too, have increased investments in cybersecurity significantly, it will be the key success imperative and define how successful we are in shaping the new norms. Cybersecurity is going to be the foundation on which the post Covid-19 IT industry will be built. The government is working closely with the industry and academia, and we need to leverage this opportunity and focus all our efforts to make India a global hub for cybersecurity,” said Debjani Ghosh, President, National Association of Software and Services Companies.

The report found that the technology spend on cybersecurity is expected to increase during and post Covid-19 due to rising risk management and privacy concerns within digital transformation initiatives through 2020. By the end of this year, nearly half of the security software delivery is expected to be driven by managed and subscribed services.

While IT spending on cybersecurity is increasing, the lack of strategized cyber spending plans are leading to increase in cyberattacks. In the US, 87 per cent enterprises across all sectors witnessed mobile threats which grew at the fastest rate in 2019, outpacing other threat types, based on Verizon’s ‘Mobile Security Index 2019’. There has been a 667 per cent increase in spear-phishing e-mail attacks related to Covid-19, since the end of February 2020.

The cybersecurity services market in India is growing twice as fast as the global market, and Indian cybersecurity service companies are expanding their global presence because of demand for security from within and outside India.