77% of respondents from defense industry consider cyber warfare to be a real threat to combat in 2012

Wednesday 18 July 2012, Amsterdam

Survey results reveal that defense organizations’ cyber security budgets are expected to rise by an average of 6% over the next 12 months, with 49% of respondents who expect at least some increase in their cyber security expenditure, whereas another 49% of respondents expect no change. Financial viability in the time of economic slowdown, no incidence in their organizations so far and the belief that cyber warfare is just a hype are cited as key reasons for not expecting any change in cyber security budgets in 2012 (reference see graph below). Cyber security budgets of global defense organizations are expected to rise by an average of 6% over the next 12 months. Buyer respondents plan to spend more on ‘anti-virus, anti-spyware and anti-adware’, ‘encryption technology’ and ‘firewalls and intrusion detection software’.

Throughout the global defense industry, an average of 43% of respondents from defense buyer companies and 47% from supplier companies expect cyber warfare to be the key segment to register growth in 2012. A further 48% of respondents from buyers and 39% from supplier companies consider cyber warfare to be a key segment for growth in 2012 along with few other important areas.

Survey results show 77% of respondents, from both buyer and supplier segments, consider cyber warfare a real threat to act upon due to its ability to exploit the information systems and cause more harm than conventional weapons. Conversely, an average 19% of respondents consider that cyber warfare is overhyped and is politicized considering a huge market opportunity for security related products and services.

Global defense industry respondents identify the US and China as the top spenders in cyber security products and services, followed by Russia and the UK. Additionally, defense suppliers also expect the US, the UK, Germany and China to be the top spenders in terms of cyber security products and services.

According to the survey, the average size of the global, annual cyber security budgets of respondents from defense organizations in 2012 is estimated at US$3.4 m. At the same time, the average size of global annual cyber security budgets among defense contractors is US$2.0 m, compared to US$0.4 m for other service providers.

Survey results reveal that defense organizations’ cyber security budgets are expected to rise by an average of 6% over the next 12 months, whereas respondents from defense contractor companies and other service providers, on average, expect to increase their total cyber security budget by 8.6% and 4.6% respectively over the next 12 months.