ETR and theCUBEResearch conducted a survey to track security budgets, priorities, vendor trends, and more in advance of the 2024 RSA Conference. The survey garnered responses from 321 security-specific IT decision makers, including 72 from Global 2000 organizations. The results of this comprehensive security survey are not to be missed, with critical insights into growing security budgets, contrarian data on expected vendor consolidation, and so much more. Review the highlights below, or see the full data set on your own!
One of the many actionable takeaways from this comprehensive survey is that 87% of all respondents expect their security-related budget to increase over the next twelve months, with 56% of the respondents expecting an increase in the 5-14% range, while 14% anticipate an increase of more than 15%. Roughly 10% expect budgets to remain flat, and only 3% cited an intent to lower their security spending. Among Large organizations, the results were fairly consistent with total respondent levels; however, among Midsize organizations, 92% cited an increasing budget, with 23% expecting that increase to be more than 15%. Global 2000 respondents cited the lowest expectation for hyper-growth, with only 3% citing that answer option.
Another key finding from this survey was that the majority (51%) of respondents expect the total number of their organization’s security-specific vendors to increase. An additional 37% expect them to remain flat, and only 9% expect to see vendor consolidation. This data is notable and contrasts recent comments around vendor consolidation and a platform-strategy approach from several public information security companies.
Regarding the upcoming RSA conference, 62% of survey respondents who plan to attend were most interested in AI/LLM security. C-Suite respondents were less interested in ZTNA, API Security, and CSPM. Practitioners were least interested in CSPM and EDX/XDR, while the Management title cut showed higher interest in Data Security Posture Management (39%).
We also asked the expected RSA conference attendees which security vendors they wanted to meet with. CrowdStrike and Cisco had double-digit response rates, and Palo Alto, Okta, and Akamai also had high responses. Despite vendor options being listed, 72% cited "Other," where CrowdStrike, Cisco, and Palo Alto had the most write-ins. Additional vendors with over 5 write-ins were Okta, Google, Fortinet, Zscaler, Abnormal Security, 1Password, Splunk, SentinelOne, Microsoft, and Wiz.
The full report evaluates direct end-user data on many more topics, including:
• What is driving security budgets higher?
• What the areas of priority are within cybersecurity?
• Evaluation and spending plans around Gen AI-related security tools
• Details about Threat Intelligence data ingestion
• Identity Access and MFA Utilization
• In-house security teams versus outsourced Managed security services, plus security hiring trends
• RSA-Specific hot topics and top security vendors of interest from planned attendees and so much more
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Enterprise Technology Research (ETR) is a technology market research firm that leverages proprietary data from our targeted IT decision maker (ITDM) community to provide actionable insights about spending intentions and industry trends. Since 2010, we have worked diligently at achieving one goal: eliminating the need for opinions in enterprise research, which are often formed from incomplete, biased, and statistically insignificant data. Our community of ITDMs represents $1+ trillion in annual IT spend and is positioned to provide best-in-class customer/evaluator perspectives. ETR’s proprietary data and insights from this community empower institutional investors, technology companies, and ITDMs to navigate the complex enterprise technology landscape amid an expanding marketplace. Discover what ETR can do for you at www.etr.ai