15 fastest-growing security categories in Gartner’s 3Q25 Information Security Forecast
Cloud Security Posture Management is growing at a 31.23% CAGR. Zero Trust Network Access at 23.25%. Threat Intelligence at 22.17%. The overall security market? Just 10.55%. Fifteen categories are outpacing the market by two to three times, collectively capturing $106 billion in new spending by 2029. Enterprise security budgets aren’t just expanding. They’re being redirected.
And the driver? Brutally simple.
Gartner estimates 99% of cloud security failures through 2025 will be the customer’s fault, primarily due to misconfigurations. Organizations are responding by investing aggressively in technologies that automate what humans simply can’t manage manually across hundreds of cloud accounts, thousands of APIs, and millions of potential attack vectors.
What these growth rates say about Gartner’s view of the market
These fifteen categories represent $106.4 billion in new spending by 2029, growing from today’s baseline. What do they have in common? Three characteristics that explain why enterprises are pouring money into them:
- Automation at Scale. Every high-growth category automates processes that break when done manually, whether it’s scanning cloud configurations, managing consent across jurisdictions, or detecting behavioral anomalies in network traffic. There’s no other way to keep pace.
- Proactive vs. Reactive. These technologies prevent problems rather than clean up after them. CSPM catches misconfigurations before breaches. ZTNA eliminates the attack surface that VPNs create. Tokenization protects data even if systems are compromised. Security teams are finally getting ahead of the threat curve instead of playing catch-up.
- Measurable ROI. IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report shows organizations using AI and automation extensively save $1.9 million per breach and reduce breach lifecycle by 80 days. With U.S. breach costs hitting $10.22 million, these investments pay for themselves with a single prevented incident.
The 15 categories reshaping security architecture
1. Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) | 31.23% CAGR | $2.5B → $13.0B
CSPM tools continuously scan infrastructure across AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. With 82% of misconfigurations caused by human error and organizations managing 100+ cloud accounts, CSPM automates what’s mathematically impossible to do manually. The market will reach $15.6 billion by 2032.
2. Cloud Access Security Brokers (CASB) | 25.82% CAGR | $1.5B → $5.8B
Here’s a reality check. Enterprises average 112 SaaS applications, but shadow IT, or unauthorized apps, accounts for 42% of all applications. IT remains unaware of one-third of the apps on its networks. The damage? 65% of shadow IT companies suffer data loss, and 52% experience breaches. CASBs transform this chaos into visibility and control.
3. Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA) | 23.25% CAGR | $1.6B → $5.6B
ZTNA kills the VPN model. Instead of network access, it provides application-specific connections verified for every request. Gartner predicts 70% of new remote access deployments will use ZTNA by 2025. With 65% of companies planning to replace VPNs, this shift represents a wholesale rethinking of secure access. The perimeter-based model is dying. Good riddance.
4. Cloud Workload Protection Platforms (CWPP) | 22.78% CAGR | $3.9B → $13.5B
CWPP platforms secure everything from traditional VMs to containers that exist for milliseconds. Legacy endpoint security can’t protect ephemeral containers or serverless functions—it wasn’t designed for workloads that appear and disappear in seconds. The shift to microservices demands purpose-built security.
5. Consent and Preference Management | 22.39% CAGR | $0.5B → $1.7B
GDPR fines reached €5.88 billion by January 2025, according to the DLA Piper GDPR Fines and Data Breach Survey. California’s CCPA penalties continue climbing; the California Privacy Protection Agency fined Todd Snyder $345,178 for inadequate opt-out and privacy request processes. Manual handling can’t meet regulatory deadlines. Automation prevents massive fines.
6. Threat Intelligence | 22.17% CAGR | $1.8B → $5.8B
IBM data shows threat intelligence reduces detection and escalation costs by $1.63 million while cutting incidents by 30%. Modern platforms aggregate data about bad actors and vulnerabilities, transforming raw threat data into automated responses across security stacks. The days of threat feeds sitting in dashboards, unused, are over.
7. Subject Rights Request Automation | 16.53% CAGR | $0.8B → $2.1B
When users demand “delete my data,” these platforms automate the process across all systems. Manual handling doesn’t scale, not when you’re managing requests across multiple jurisdictions with different requirements and tight deadlines.
8. Tokenization | 14.26% CAGR | $1.0B → $2.2B
Tokenization replaces sensitive data with meaningless tokens that can’t be mathematically reversed. Why the urgency now? NIST standardized quantum-resistant algorithms, including ML-KEM (formerly CRYSTALS-Kyber), in August 2024. Organizations are preparing for quantum threats expected within five to ten years.
9. Network Detection and Response (NDR) | 14.05% CAGR | $1.6B → $3.5B
NDR platforms use AI to establish behavioral baselines and detect anomalies signaling compromise. Here’s the mindset shift: rather than hoping to prevent all attacks, innovative organizations invest in rapid detection that minimizes damage when sophisticated attackers inevitably get through. Prevention isn’t enough anymore.
10. Vulnerability Assessment | 13.98% CAGR | $2.6B → $5.7B
Cloud infrastructure changes constantly. Quarterly scans are obsolete before they finish. Modern platforms provide continuous scanning in CI/CD pipelines, prioritizing based on real-world exploit data. DevOps teams deploying daily need vulnerability detection that keeps pace. Anything less is theater.
11. Endpoint Protection Platform (EPP) | 13.61% CAGR | $13.5B → $29.1B
The largest category doubles to $29.1 billion as ransomware attacks surge. According to Cyble analysis cited by TechTarget, U.S. ransomware attacks increased by 149% year-over-year in the first five weeks of 2025. Manufacturing led targets with 638 attacks in 2023, per Statista data compiled by Fortinet. Next-gen EPP uses behavioral analytics to stop ransomware before encryption begins—catching what traditional antivirus misses.
12. Secure Web Gateway (SWG) | 13.26% CAGR | $3.3B → $7.0B
Malicious sites appear and disappear in hours. Cloud-delivered SWGs update threat intelligence in real-time, protecting remote workers wherever they connect. Integration with ZTNA creates comprehensive security that follows users across devices and locations. The old perimeter? It no longer exists.
13. Web Application Firewalls (WAF) | 11.93% CAGR | $2.0B → $3.8B
Organizations expose hundreds of APIs, each a potential attack vector. Traditional network firewalls can’t inspect application-layer attacks. Modern WAFs use machine learning to distinguish legitimate users from attackers without blocking customers. Getting that balance right is harder than it sounds.
14. Encryption | 11.90% CAGR | $1.0B → $2.0B
NIST’s standardization of quantum-resistant algorithms signals urgency. Attackers already practice “harvest now, decrypt later”—collecting encrypted data for future quantum decryption. Organizations must transition to post-quantum cryptography now, as full integration takes years. This isn’t theoretical risk anymore.
15. Security Information and Event Management (SIEM) | 11.74% CAGR | $5.8B → $11.3B
AI transforms SIEM from reactive to proactive. Organizations using AI-powered automation save $1.9 million per breach, according to IBM’s newsroom. Machine learning models identify attack patterns and detect zero-day threats before signatures exist, turning security operations into a competitive advantage.
The Investment Thesis behind the numbers
These growth rates reflect three converging realities:
- Cloud Complexity Is Exponential. With 79% of organizations using multiple cloud providers and managing hundreds of accounts, manual security is mathematically impossible. The 31.23% CAGR for CSPM isn’t optimism, it’s survival.
- AI Changes Everything. Shadow AI breaches cost $4.63 million, $670,000 more than standard incidents. But AI also powers the defense, with automated security tools reducing breach lifecycles by 80 days. The same technology that creates vulnerabilities offers the best defense.
- Compliance Costs Are Skyrocketing. Between GDPR, CCPA, and emerging regulations, manual compliance is a liability that grows daily. Automation platforms turn regulatory requirements into competitive advantages.
The Bottom Line
The organizations winning this race aren’t those with the most significant security budgets; they’re those investing in the right categories at the right time. These fifteen segments aren’t just growing fast; they’re defining what modern security architecture looks like.
The message from Gartner’s data is unambiguous: security spending is shifting from reactive to proactive, from manual to automated, from perimeter-based to zero-trust. Organizations still relying on legacy approaches aren’t just falling behind; they’re accepting risks that the market has already priced as unacceptable.
Source: Gartner Information Security Forecast 3Q25 Update (Document G00839334), showing overall market growth from $215.8B (2025) to $322.2B (2029) at 10.55% CAGR
