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Australian and New Zealand security partners are in for a treat next year as 73 per cent of CIOs in the region plan to invest the lion’s share of their IT budget on the practice.
According to research firm Gartner’s annual global survey of CIOs and technology executives, cyber security was the number one priority in A/NZ when it came to planned investments during 2022, based on responses from 114 CIOs in the region across the public, private and non-profit sectors.
This is an increase from 67 per cent from 2021's prediction — higher than the global appetite for the technology, which sat at a predicted 66 per cent.
The local results of the survey found cyber security surpassed 2021's top IT budget priority predication of data analytics, which, when combined with business intelligence, sat at 58 per cent of respondents in the 2022 forecast.
It also outpaced integration technologies and application programming interfaces (API) at 45 per cent, cloud platforms at 44 per cent and digital business transformation at 38 per cent.
In fact, investment into cyber security is diluting spending in other areas, claimed Andy Rowsell-Jones, distinguished research vice president at Gartner.
“This continuing need to invest heavily in cyber security in A/NZ is creating a cyber security ‘tax’, hindering progress in other areas by redirecting investments that could be used for future innovation – a risk-based approach is needed to make sure organisations are not spending too much,” he said.
Overall, business IT budgets in A/NZ are expected to rise next year with an average growth of 3.1 per cent for 2022 but does not reach the global average of 3.6 per cent.
“This increase in IT budgets means CIOs and technology executives have a greater choice of where to invest,” said Rowsell-Jones.
“Without big deficits to remedy elsewhere, they can afford to invest in composability, especially for developers and business architects who can design in a composable manner, as well as invest in packaged business capabilities.”
