Gartner says frontier AI turns patch speed into a vanity metric. Spending bars show the exposure-focused categories in Gartner’s 3Q26 security forecast. Click any chart to open it full size. Sources: Gartner (G00859901, Aug. 6, 2026; G00862059, Sept. 24, 2026), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
Gartner’s new research on frontier AI vulnerability management says the patch-speed metric most security teams report to their boards no longer measures anything useful.
Gartner analysts Rob McMillan and Alex Michaels put it bluntly in a research note published August 6: “Measuring ‘how fast we patch’ is a vanity metric; the only metric that matters now is ‘tolerable exposure time.'”
The note covers one of Gartner’s nine top cybersecurity trends for 2026: frontier AI models transforming vulnerability management. Its central argument runs against most vendor messaging. The real shock from frontier AI is not faster attackers. It is the volume of vulnerabilities that vendors and open-source projects will now find in their own code, and the flood of urgent updates that follows.
Gartner calls it a supply side shock, one that “permanently breaks traditional volume-based patching processes.”
The bars in the hero chart show 2026 and 2030 end-user spending for four exposure-focused categories. Six tiles underneath summarize the note’s core findings.
Why frontier AI breaks volume-based vulnerability management
Gartner is direct about where the pressure comes from. Frontier models can compress attacker cycle times by automating reconnaissance and payload iteration, the analysts write, but “attackers have historically always been faster than defenders.”
The change is on the supply side. As vendors and open-source projects use AI to uncover latent flaws, organizations “will face a greatly heightened volume of urgent security updates.” The note expects those updates to arrive in multiple waves, timed in large part to when new security-focused frontier models become available to IT suppliers.
The exploit window is shrinking at the same time. Gartner says the gap between vulnerability disclosure and active exploitation “has collapsed to minutes because AI models can autonomously reverse-engineer patches into exploits.”
Gartner’s four core insights:
Traditional vulnerability management was already misaligned with attacker timelines before AI. Without change, the gap is now unbridgeable.
Mandates to “patch everything faster” move risk from successful attacks to operational outages and increase self-inflicted downtime.
The bottleneck is testing and change management, not patching capacity. Each wave of AI-discovered vulnerabilities adds complexity and strains resources.
Regulatory pressure for rapid patching can conflict with operational reality. Storytelling about real business impact becomes a necessary skill.
“Patch everything faster” moves the risk, it doesn’t remove it
The note treats blanket speed mandates as a risk transfer. Unrealistic demands to patch everything immediately “merely transfer the risk from malicious actors to insufficient IT testing, increasing the likelihood of self-inflicted downtime.”
Gartner frames enterprise risk management as an explicit choice between breach risk and outage risk. The CISO, infrastructure and operations leaders and other stakeholders need business leaders to formally accept the relative risks of patching-related downtime against attack-related downtime.
Faster patching still helps at the margins. The note says the gains are capped by maintenance windows, the need for bespoke fixes in complex software stacks and other constraints.
From volume SLAs to exposure SLAs
Gartner’s replacement is a shift from volume-based patching service-level agreements to exposure-based ones.
What Gartner says breaks under AI-accelerated vulnerability discovery, and what replaces it. Source: Gartner (G00859901, Aug. 6, 2026), layout by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
Static vulnerability characteristics, including CVSS scores and scanning results, are “still necessary, but it is no longer sufficient for prioritization of remedies,” the note says. Prioritization must rest on real exploitability and business context.
Gartner wants the most urgent vulnerabilities, “not necessarily the highest impact,” first in the queue, and mitigated within the organization’s maximum tolerable exposure time.
Accountability moves too. Product and platform teams are held to their exposure limits, with the flexibility to use virtual patching or network isolation when change management blocks an immediate code fix.
CTEM becomes the operating model
Gartner tells organizations to abandon volume-based patching and adopt continuous threat exposure management, or CTEM. Its five stages run from scoping and discovery through prioritization, validation and mobilization.
Gartner’s CTEM cycle with stage notes drawn from the frontier AI research note. Source: Gartner (G00859901, Aug. 6, 2026), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
The note warns that “a failure to shift to a CTEM approach will result in continued patch deferral and therefore a slow but continuing escalation in risk profile.” Update complexity, and the time and collaboration needed to remediate, is likely to rise with each wave.
Gartner’s broader information security forecast points the same direction. Its 3Q26 report expects organizations to shift from reactive defense toward CTEM, with AI assistants automating event triage, false-positive reduction and code remediation.
The spending signal in Gartner’s security forecast
The categories that support exposure-based prioritization grow faster than the security market overall. Gartner’s 3Q26 forecast puts total information security spending at $247.5 billion in 2026 and $372.8 billion by 2030, a 10.8% CAGR in constant currency from 2025.
Category
2026
2030
2025-2030 CAGR
Threat intelligence
$3.1B
$6.1B
19.0%
Network detection and response
$2.6B
$4.1B
12.4%
Vulnerability assessment
$4.1B
$6.4B
12.0%
Managed security operations
$15.6B
$22.7B
+$7.0B added
Total information security
$247.5B
$372.8B
10.8%
End-user spending in current U.S. dollars; CAGRs in constant currency. Source: Gartner G00862059 (September 2026).
The note uses the AI-driven update surge to force a decision most organizations defer. Technical debt “generally falls into the ‘we will take care of it later’ bucket,” the analysts write. “‘Later’ must be ‘now.'”
CISOs guide the prioritization. CIOs, enterprise architecture and I&O teams have to execute the remediation in the short to medium term. Technical debt also appears separately in Gartner’s 2026 trends list, where it undermines organizational AI ambitions.
Use agentic application security testing selectively
Gartner recommends agentic application security testing, or AAST, for mission-critical applications. AAST can uncover business-logic vulnerabilities and multistep exploits by using context windows to reason through application logic.
The note pairs its reachability analysis, vulnerability prioritization and automated code remediation as the way to keep pace with AI-driven discovery volume.
There is a budget catch. Token consumption “is likely to drive an increase in application security budgets that many organizations will struggle to absorb under current assumptions.” Gartner’s advice is to use AAST selectively now and plan for the budget impact later.
Regulators want counts, CISOs need a story
Gartner says regulators, including the ECB and ESRB, already demand mitigation plans for systemic cyber risks caused by AI. One Gartner client reported pressure from a regulator to address a set number of vulnerabilities within 30 days.
The analysts read that as regulators not always understanding that a more surgical approach is sometimes needed “in order that one problem isn’t substituted for a worse problem.” In the short term, organizations may have to comply with both approaches in parallel.
Gartner expects regulation of AI in critical business processes to tighten. Third-party contracts will likely need vendors to disclose AI model usage and set contingencies for provider outages. Some frontier models may also face export controls or tighter access restrictions. The note cites Anthropic’s Fable 5 and Mythos 5 in 2026 as examples and advises building model-independent roadmaps.
Board talking points Gartner gives CISOs
Gartner’s Figure 1 gives CISOs three talking points for boards worried about Mythos, Daybreak and frontier AI risk:
Foundational controls. Threat actors must still chain attacks. Core controls still provide adequate protection against advanced threats.
Prioritization. A vulnerability does not equal exploitability. Environmental constraints, required privileges and mitigating controls make many flaws impractical to exploit.
Accelerator. Defensive AI scales the defender’s advantage through automated code analysis, threat intelligence and incident response.
The strategic shift, in Gartner’s words, is from asking “how fast do we patch?” to asking “what is our tolerance for remaining exposed to a known vulnerability?”
Where this sits in Gartner’s 2026 trends
Gartner groups its top cybersecurity trends for 2026 into three themes: secure new frontiers, transform governance and normalize AI adoption. Frontier AI and vulnerability management sits under normalizing AI adoption, alongside AI-driven SOC solutions and the breakdown of traditional security awareness tactics.
Gartner’s top cybersecurity trends for 2026 by theme. Source: Gartner (G00859901, Aug. 6, 2026), layout by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
What security leaders should do now
Retire volume-based patch SLAs. Replace them with exposure-based SLAs tied to maximum tolerable exposure time, and adopt CTEM.
Get formal risk acceptance. Have business leaders sign off on the tradeoff between patch-related downtime and attack-related downtime.
Fund testing and change management. That is the bottleneck Gartner identifies, not patch deployment.
Pay down technical debt now. Each AI-driven update wave makes legacy remediation harder.
Pilot AAST on mission-critical apps. Budget for token costs before scaling it.
Build model-independent AI roadmaps. Plan for export controls, access limits and provider outages.
Frequently asked questions
What does Gartner say about frontier AI and vulnerability management? Gartner says frontier AI is driving an unprecedented volume of vulnerability discoveries that makes volume-driven patching obsolete. It recommends exposure-based SLAs and continuous threat exposure management.
What is tolerable exposure time? Gartner defines the meaningful metric as how long critical vulnerabilities remain unmitigated, measured against the organization’s maximum tolerable exposure time.
Why not just patch faster? Gartner says blanket faster-patching mandates shift risk from attacks to self-inflicted outages, because testing and change management are the real bottleneck.
What is AAST? Agentic application security testing uses AI agents to find business-logic flaws and multistep exploits. Gartner recommends using it selectively because token consumption raises application security costs.
How I built this analysis
Quotes and recommendations come from Gartner’s research note G00859901, published August 6, 2026, as part of its Top Trends in Cybersecurity, 2H26 research. Category spending and CAGRs come from Gartner’s 3Q26 information security forecast (G00862059). The pairing of the two documents, the comparison table and the CTEM stage notes are my analysis.
Gartner’s 3Q26 enterprise application software forecast by market, 2024-2030, with six tiles on the numbers that matter most. Click any chart to open it full size. Source: Gartner (G00862072, Sept. 22, 2026), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
Enterprise application software spending reaches $496.3 billion in 2026 and $812.6 billion by 2030, according to the latest Gartner application software forecast. That is a 12.8% compound annual growth rate in constant currency, revised up from 12.7% last quarter.
The headline growth rate hides a sharper story. CRM alone captures $119.2 billion, or 38%, of the $316.2 billion the market adds between 2026 and 2030. In the same report, Gartner says cross-functional agentic AI will cannibalize $116 billion from traditional application software spending by 2030.
Those two numbers are close in size, and they point to the same conclusion. Most of the new money in application software goes to the markets where agentic AI is proving value first. Legacy suites that do not embed agents compete for a shrinking slice.
I built this analysis from Gartner’s Forecast: Enterprise Application Software, Worldwide, 2024-2030, 3Q26 (G00862072), published September 22, 2026. All market, subsegment and regional figures come from the 7,567-row dataset Gartner publishes with the report. The shares, dollars added and comparisons are my calculations.
Agentic AI is the growth engine and the threat
Gartner says cumulative spending between 2026 and 2030 will exceed $3.2 trillion, “fueled by the transition from Generative AI to Agentic AI.” The dataset totals $3,227 billion over those five years.
Gartner expects business leaders to favor applications with embedded agentic capabilities, and vendors to compete on how much functionality they deliver through agents. It warns that “legacy offerings risk rapid obsolescence.”
Early value is already showing up in three segments, according to Gartner: CRM, analytics and human capital management (HCM). Adoption starts inside functional silos such as marketing, sales and customer service, where use cases are maturing. Cross-functional integration follows once use cases prove out, the technology matures and enterprises build trust.
That second phase is where the $116 billion comes from. Gartner covers it in a separate report, Spending on Cross-Functional Agentic AI Will Cannibalize $116 Billion of Spending From Application Software Markets by 2030.
CRM takes the largest share of new spending
Each market’s 2025-2030 CAGR against dollars added from 2026 to 2030. Bubble size shows 2030 spending. Source: Gartner (G00862072), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
CRM grows from $170.5 billion in 2026 to $289.8 billion in 2030 at a 13.8% CAGR. Its share of the total market rises from 34.4% to 35.7%.
Analytic platforms post the fastest market-level growth at 14.5%, reaching $73.8 billion. Email and authoring grows 13.6% to $77.2 billion, and supply chain management grows 13.2% to $71.5 billion. All three beat the market average.
ERP, other application software, content services and project and portfolio management all grow below 12%. Together they still add $106.5 billion, but each loses share.
Market
2025
2026
2030
CAGR 2025-2030
Added 2026-2030
Share of new spending
CRM
$149.1B
$170.5B
$289.8B
13.8%
+$119.2B
37.7%
ERP
$73.5B
$83.0B
$130.9B
11.6%
+$47.9B
15.1%
Other application software
$74.6B
$83.5B
$128.6B
10.9%
+$45.1B
14.3%
Analytic platforms
$36.7B
$42.3B
$73.8B
14.5%
+$31.5B
9.9%
Email and authoring
$40.1B
$47.0B
$77.2B
13.6%
+$30.3B
9.6%
Supply chain management
$37.6B
$42.8B
$71.5B
13.2%
+$28.7B
9.1%
Content services
$18.9B
$21.3B
$31.9B
10.5%
+$10.6B
3.4%
Project and portfolio management
$5.3B
$5.9B
$8.8B
10.2%
+$2.9B
0.9%
Total
$435.8B
$496.3B
$812.6B
12.8%
+$316.2B
100%
Spending in current U.S. dollars. CAGRs in constant currency. Dollars added and shares calculated by Software Strategies Blog from Gartner’s 3Q26 dataset (G00862072).
Cross-CRM and decision intelligence lead 23 subsegments
All 23 subsegments ranked by 2025-2030 CAGR in constant currency, with 2030 spending. Colors mark the parent market. Source: Gartner (G00862072), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
Decision intelligence platforms grow fastest, at 20.8%, and more than double from $2.7 billion in 2026 to $5.7 billion in 2030. The subsegment is small, but it sits closest to the agentic pattern Gartner describes: software that recommends or takes decisions rather than reporting on them.
Cross-CRM is the more important signal. It grows 18.9% a year and doubles from $27.5 billion to $55.7 billion. That is $28.1 billion of new spending, or 24% of CRM’s total gain. Cross-CRM is the closest thing in this dataset to the cross-functional integration Gartner expects agentic AI to drive.
Customer service and support remains the largest CRM subsegment, reaching $89.7 billion at 13.1%. Marketing reaches $68.1 billion at 12.8%. Sales grows slowest inside CRM, at 11.8%, to $50.2 billion.
Analytics and BI platforms grow 15.0% to $49.4 billion. Within supply chain management, orchestration platforms (14.3%) and procurement (14.2%) lead.
HCM carries ERP
ERP is the market where the subsegment split matters most. HCM grows 13.5% and reaches $78.5 billion by 2030, 60% of all ERP spending. It accounts for $31.7 billion, or 66%, of ERP’s $47.9 billion gain.
The rest of ERP grows slowly. Financial management systems components grow 9.7% to $41.8 billion. Enterprise asset management grows 8.0% to $4.6 billion. Core manufacturing and operations management grows 6.7% to $6.0 billion, the slowest of all 23 subsegments.
That fits Gartner’s list of where early agentic value is showing up. HCM made the list. Finance, asset management and manufacturing operations did not.
North America takes 57% of new spending
2030 spending by region with 2025-2030 CAGR and share of the global market. Source: Gartner (G00862072), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
North America reaches $461.9 billion in 2030, 56.8% of worldwide spending, and grows 13.1% a year. It captures $180.9 billion, or 57.2%, of the market’s new spending.
Europe grows 10.2%, the slowest of any region, and its share drops from 23.3% in 2026 to 22.0% in 2030.
The fastest growth is in Asia. Emerging Asia/Pacific grows 19.2% to $25.9 billion, and China grows 17.1% to $37.3 billion. Together they add $30.7 billion and lift their combined share from 6.6% to 7.8%.
What changed in the Gartner application software forecast
Change in 2030 spending by market vs. Gartner’s 2Q26 forecast. Dollar changes include exchange-rate effects. Source: Gartner (G00862072, Table 2), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
Gartner revised growth for only two markets. Email and authoring rose 0.5 to 0.6 percentage points a year. Content services rose 0.2 to 2.0 points a year, including 1.4 points in 2026. Gartner says growth trajectories for every other market are unchanged.
In U.S. dollars, the total forecast is $657 million lower for 2026 and $2.5 billion lower for 2027 than in 2Q26, then $3.3 billion higher by 2030. The 2030 gains are concentrated in content services (+$1.73 billion) and email and authoring (+$1.72 billion). Exchange rates explain the remaining dollar movement in markets where growth rates did not change.
Gartner also repeats a note on the war in the Middle East. It expects disruption to the Strait of Hormuz to continue into 2027 and energy prices to stay more than 50% above pre-war levels. Gartner expects the main near-term IT spending impact to be a rebalancing of sourcing strategies, vendor relationships and regional exposure, not a material reduction in spending.
A reading note
Gartner reports growth in constant currency, using 2024 exchange rates as the base. Market sizes are in current U.S. dollars, so 2026 spending rises 13.9% in dollars but 12.7% in constant currency. I use constant-currency CAGRs throughout and dollar values for sizes, dollars added and shares.
The $116 billion cannibalization figure comes from a separate Gartner report cited in this forecast. I compare it with CRM’s dollar gain to show scale, not to suggest that one offsets the other.
What software leaders should do
Follow the dollars, not the CAGR. CRM, ERP and other application software account for 67% of new spending. Analytics grows faster but adds less than a third as much as CRM.
Treat cross-CRM as the agentic beachhead. It doubles to $55.7 billion and sits where Gartner expects cross-functional agents to spread first.
Separate HCM from the rest of ERP. HCM delivers two-thirds of ERP’s growth. Finance, asset management and manufacturing operations vendors need an agentic story to avoid sliding below 10% growth.
Plan for cannibalization inside your own portfolio. Gartner’s $116 billion estimate means agentic AI will replace spending as well as add to it.
Weight go-to-market toward North America and fast-growing Asia. North America takes 57% of the gain. Emerging Asia/Pacific and China grow fastest. Europe grows slowest.
Frequently asked questions
How large is the enterprise application software market in 2026? Gartner forecasts $496.3 billion in end-user spending in 2026, up 12.7% in constant currency.
How large will it be in 2030? Gartner forecasts $812.6 billion in 2030, a 12.8% CAGR in constant currency from 2025 to 2030.
Which market is largest? CRM, at $289.8 billion in 2030, or 35.7% of the total.
Which segment grows fastest? Decision intelligence platforms, at a 20.8% CAGR. Among the eight markets, analytic platforms grow fastest at 14.5%.
How will agentic AI affect application software spending? Gartner says agentic AI drives growth, with early value in CRM, analytics and HCM. It also says cross-functional agentic AI will cannibalize $116 billion from traditional application software spending by 2030.
How I built this analysis
Market totals, growth revisions and quotes come from Gartner’s 3Q26 enterprise application software forecast (G00862072). Subsegment and regional figures come from the dataset Gartner publishes with the report, which covers eight markets, 23 subsegments, nine regions and 2024 to 2030. I calculated constant-currency CAGRs from 2025 to 2030, dollars added from 2026 to 2030, and market and regional shares. Charts are my own work from that data.
Security spending climbs to $372.8B by 2030, and post-quantum firewall refreshes drew the only upgrade. Click any chart to open it full size. Source: Gartner (G00862059, Sept. 24, 2026), analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
The 3Q26 Gartner information security forecast raised exactly one growth rate.
Gartner now projects firewall equipment spending to grow 13.4% in 2027 in constant currency, up from the 7.8% in its June forecast. Network security equipment overall rises to 12.8% from 8.7%. Post-quantum cryptography (PQC) is the cause. Many installed firewalls can’t run the new algorithms, which forces early replacement.
Every other business category in the 41-category forecast kept the constant-currency outlook it had 91 days earlier.
Published September 24, the forecast puts worldwide end-user spending at $247.5 billion in 2026, up 13.6% in current U.S. dollars and 12.7% in constant currency.
Spending reaches $372.8 billion by 2030. Gartner frames that as $373 billion and a 10.8% compound annual growth rate in constant currency from 2025 through 2030.
I built this analysis from Gartner’s 3Q26 report (G00862059), the full detailed dataset of 13,489 rows covering 47 countries, 9 regions, 41 categories and 7 years, and a line-by-line comparison against the 2Q26 file Gartner released in June (G00855892).
Each bar in the hero chart stacks four parts of Gartner’s forecast in current U.S. dollars. Navy is business security software, mid-blue is security services, sky blue is network security and light blue is consumer security software. Bold figures above the bars give each year’s total, with Gartner’s constant-currency growth rate in italics.
Six tiles underneath carry the 2026 and 2030 totals, the $125.4 billion in new spending between 2026 and 2030, the 2030 firewall revision in constant currency, the change in Gartner’s 2027 firewall growth forecast and the securing AI trajectory.
Both the 56% software share and the $80.5 billion software tile include consumer security software.
Gartner information security forecast puts 2026 at $247.5B and 2030 at $372.8B
Gartner splits the market into security software, security services and network security. Software keeps gaining share in every year of the forecast.
Each column in the chart below adds to 100% of total spending. Navy is security software, including consumer. Mid-blue is security services and sky blue is network security.
A panel on the right lists each market’s 2024 and 2030 spending and share. I calculated the shares from Gartner’s current-dollar figures.
Share of worldwide information security spending by market, 2024 to 2030, current U.S. dollars. Data from Gartner G00862059 (September 2026). Shares calculated by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
Total market 2026. $247.5 billion, up $29.7 billion from $217.7 billion in 2025.
Security software 2026. $126.9 billion including $9.0 billion of consumer security software. Software reaches $207.4 billion by 2030, 55.6% of all spending, up from 49.6% in 2024.
Security services 2026. $93.5 billion. Services reach $125.4 billion by 2030, but their share falls from 39.3% in 2024 to 33.6%. Constant-currency CAGR is 7.5%, the slowest of the three markets.
Network security 2026. $27.0 billion, growing 15.0% in constant currency. It reaches $40.0 billion by 2030. Gartner raised the 2025 to 2030 CAGR for this market to 10.9%, up from 9.8% in 2Q26.
2026 to 2030 net new spending. $125.4 billion. Security software captures $80.5 billion of it, or 64%. Services add $31.9 billion. Network security adds $13.0 billion.
Gartner’s near-term call is unchanged from June. Growth slows to 11.2% in 2027 in constant currency, then decelerates to 9.6% by 2030.
Gartner names security service edge (SSE), cloud-native application protection platforms (CNAPPs), cloud security posture management, cloud access security brokers, web application firewalls, encryption and enterprise data loss prevention as the areas where 2027 budgets will grow.
It also expects AI trust, risk and security management (AI TRiSM) adoption to rise as generative AI use widens data, application and governance risk.
Post-quantum firewall refreshes drew the only growth upgrade
Gartner’s revision table compares 3Q26 against 2Q26 for all 11 subsegments. Ten of them show 0.0% growth-rate change in every year from 2026 through 2030. Network security equipment is the exception, at +4.1 points in 2027, +1.1 in 2028, +0.4 in 2029 and -0.2 in 2030.
I ran the same comparison across all 41 categories in the detailed files. In constant currency, firewall equipment is the only category Gartner raised.
It gains $1.08 billion in 2027, $1.50 billion in 2028, $1.77 billion in 2029 and $1.84 billion in 2030. The other 40 categories, including consumer security software, match the June file to the dollar in constant currency.
In the chart below, each bar is the firewall equipment increase in constant currency. Because no other category moved, the bars are also the net change for the whole market. The total is unchanged in 2025 and 2026 and turns positive in 2027, when the firewall upgrade starts.
3Q26 vs. 2Q26 revisions by year in constant currency. Firewall equipment is the only category Gartner raised; the other 40 are unchanged. Data from Gartner G00862059 and G00855892. Revision math by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
Gartner states the cause directly. “Postquantum cryptography (PQC) requirements will drive premature hardware refreshes, initially among government, financial and defense organizations, due to the inability of many existing firewalls to support the processing demands and crypto-agility required through software or firmware updates,” the report says.
Gartner’s timing is specific. The report says “selected products may support algorithms such as FIPS 203/ML-KEM by late 2026.” Broader vendor availability follows in 2027. By 2028, Gartner expects every major firewall vendor to offer PQC-capable platforms.
Gartner expects at least 20% of customers in government, financial services and defense to upgrade in 2027, rising to more than 30% in 2028.
Firewall equipment spending and year-over-year growth, 2Q26 vs. 3Q26 forecasts, constant currency. Data from Gartner G00862059 and G00855892. Chart by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
In the top panel, the chart compares firewall equipment spending in Gartner’s 2Q26 forecast (light blue) with 3Q26 (sky blue), in constant currency. Revised values carry dark-blue labels and the 2027 and 2030 increases are marked above the bars.
Year-over-year growth sits in the bottom panel, with June’s forecast dashed and September’s solid. Both lines match through 2026, split in 2027 and converge by 2030.
That shift shows up in one year. In June, Gartner expected firewall equipment growth to fall from 16.1% in 2026 to 7.8% in 2027. Now 2027 growth holds at 13.4%.
Gartner’s revision lifts the 2027 firewall market from $20.8 billion to $21.9 billion in constant currency, and the 2030 market from $25.7 billion to $27.6 billion.
In current dollars firewall equipment reaches $28.6 billion by 2030, still the largest network security category by a wide margin.
Every region gets the upgrade at nearly the same rate. Each region’s 2030 firewall forecast rose between 6.9% and 7.8%. North America takes $834 million of the $1.84 billion. Europe takes $414 million. Together they account for 68%.
Each bar in the next chart is one region’s 2030 firewall revision in constant currency. The label shows the dollar increase, that region’s share of the $1.84 billion total and its revised 2030 firewall market. Sky-blue bars mark North America and Europe. Lighter bars are the other seven regions.
2030 firewall equipment revision by region, 3Q26 vs. 2Q26, constant currency. Data from Gartner G00862059 and G00855892. Revision math by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
Why a firmware update will not close the gap
Gartner’s argument rests on hardware. Many installed firewalls cannot meet PQC processing and crypto-agility demands through software or firmware updates. The engineering behind that is straightforward. ML-KEM public keys and ciphertexts are larger than the elliptic-curve exchanges they replace, and hybrid key exchange runs both algorithms in the same handshake.
A firewall that inspects encrypted traffic at line rate has to absorb that overhead on every session.
Federal policy points the same way. The National Security Agency’s CNSA 2.0 guidance says traditional networking equipment such as VPNs and routers should “support and prefer CNSA 2.0 by 2026, and exclusively use CNSA 2.0 by 2030.”
According to Keyfactor’s summary of the federal timeline, new National Security System acquisitions are expected to be CNSA 2.0-compliant by default from January 1, 2027, and NIST IR 8547 proposes deprecating RSA, ECDSA, EdDSA and Diffie-Hellman at the 112-bit security level after 2030, with disallowance in 2035.
Vendor roadmaps line up with Gartner’s 2027 inflection. Cisco’s Secure Firewall PQC roadmap targets ML-KEM support in Secure Firewall Threat Defense 10.5 and ASA 9.25 for general availability in late 2026.
ML-DSA signature support is planned for FTD/ASA 11.0 in the second half of 2027, and SLH-DSA support is also planned for 11.0.
Gartner names the sectors with procurement mandates first. That is why the revision lands in 2027 and fades by 2030. Gartner models the refresh as a pull-forward, with 2030 growth now slightly below the June forecast at 6.8% versus 7.0%.
After two increases, the 2026 number dips
I have tracked Gartner’s 2026 security number through four quarterly updates. The 4Q25 update projected $244.2 billion. 1Q26 raised it to $246.2 billion. 2Q26 raised it again to $248.2 billion. 3Q26 is the first update in that run to come in lower, at $247.5 billion.
Gartner’s 2026 worldwide information security spending as published in each quarterly update, current U.S. dollars. Data from Gartner 4Q25, 1Q26, 2Q26 (G00855892) and 3Q26 (G00862059) forecasts. The y-axis starts at $240 billion to make the revisions visible.
Each bar in the chart above is the 2026 total as published in one quarterly update. The labels inside the bars show the change from the previous update, at +$2.0 billion, +$2.0 billion and -$0.8 billion.
An axis starting at $240 billion keeps the revisions visible. All four estimates sit within 2% of each other.
The entire $788 million drop is currency, not lower demand. Gartner’s revision table puts the 2026 change at -$788 million in current dollars, with 0.0% change in every 2026 growth rate. In the detailed files, the 2026 total is unchanged in constant currency.
Japan shows the currency effect most clearly. Its 2030 forecast is $1.37 billion lower in current dollars than in June, yet $49 million higher in constant currency, all of it from the firewall increase.
Gartner’s notes flag exchange-rate volatility, Strait of Hormuz disruption expected to continue into 2027, energy prices more than 50% above pre-war levels and the risk that inflation and rising interest rates erode business confidence.
Gartner expects the conflict’s main near-term effect on IT spending to be a rebalancing of sourcing, vendor relationships and regional exposure rather than a material cut.
Where the $125.4 billion in new spending goes
Growth rates show where momentum is. Dollar additions show where budgets actually move. Fifteen of the 41 categories capture 76% of all new spending between 2026 and 2030.
Bars in the next chart show the dollars each of the 15 largest categories adds between 2026 and 2030, colored by market. The indigo line, read on the right axis, is the cumulative share of the $125.4 billion total.
It reaches 15% with the first category, 46% after five, 65% after ten and 76% after fifteen.
Net new spending added between 2026 and 2030 by category, current U.S. dollars, with cumulative share. Data from Gartner G00862059. Dollar additions and shares calculated by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
Other security software, including securing AI. +$19.2 billion, from $18.3 billion to $37.5 billion. The largest single dollar gain in the forecast.
Cloud security posture management. +$9.8 billion, from $6.3 billion to $16.1 billion.
Firewall equipment. +$8.8 billion, from $19.7 billion to $28.6 billion. Post-quantum refreshes make firewalls the fourth-largest source of new dollars, ahead of cloud workload protection.
Cloud workload protection platforms. +$8.2 billion, from $7.5 billion to $15.7 billion.
Managed security operations. +$7.0 billion, from $15.6 billion to $22.7 billion. The largest services gain.
Five categories alone account for $57.8 billion, or 46% of new spending. Three of them sit in cloud security or in other security software, where Gartner counts securing AI. Endpoint protection and the firewall, a category many security leaders had written off as a replacement-cycle business, make up the other two.
The 10 fastest-growing categories through 2030
Ranked by 2025 to 2030 CAGR in constant currency, cloud security takes the top three spots. Gartner’s cloud security subsegment grows from $16.6 billion in 2026 to $38.4 billion by 2030, a 24.1% CAGR and the fastest of the 11 subsegments.
In the chart, bar length is each category’s 2025 to 2030 CAGR in constant currency. The label gives the CAGR and the category’s 2026 and 2030 market size in current dollars.
Navy marks security software and sky blue marks network security. The dashed line is the 10.8% market CAGR, so every bar crosses it by at least 1.2 points.
Top 10 of 41 categories by 2025-2030 CAGR in constant currency, with 2026 and 2030 market sizes in current U.S. dollars. Data from Gartner G00862059. Ranking by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
Cloud security posture management. 27.6% CAGR. $6.3 billion in 2026 to $16.1 billion in 2030.
Cloud access security brokers. 24.3%. $2.8 billion to $6.5 billion.
Cloud workload protection platforms. 21.0%. $7.5 billion to $15.7 billion.
Zero trust network access. 20.9%. $3.0 billion to $6.4 billion. The fastest-growing network security category.
Threat intelligence. 19.0%. $3.1 billion to $6.1 billion.
Consent and preference management. 18.6%. $1.0 billion to $2.0 billion.
Other security software, including securing AI. 18.5%. $18.3 billion to $37.5 billion.
Network detection and response. 12.4%. $2.6 billion to $4.1 billion.
Subject rights request automation. 12.3%. $1.5 billion to $2.3 billion.
Vulnerability assessment. 12.0%. $4.1 billion to $6.4 billion.
Gartner’s own opportunity map plots the 11 subsegments on two axes. The horizontal axis is the 2025 to 2030 CAGR. The vertical axis is dollars added over the same period. Bubble size is the 2030 market. The dashed vertical line marks the overall 10.8% CAGR.
Cloud security and other security software sit alone on the right, the only two subsegments growing faster than 15%. Infrastructure protection is the largest subsegment at $62.7 billion by 2030 and adds the most dollars, about $26 billion, while growing at the market average.
Figure 1: Information Security Market Opportunities, 2030 Segment Forecast. Source: Gartner, G00862059 (September 2026). Original figure by Gartner. Commentary and independent analysis by softwarestrategiesblog.com. Please click to expand.
Securing AI becomes the largest line item in 2029
Gartner places securing AI inside other security software. The report sizes the market for securing AI ecosystems and AI agents at $3 billion in 2026 and $16 billion by 2030, citing its companion analysis, Forecasting the $16.4 Billion Opportunity in Securing AI.
That makes securing AI about 16% of the other security software category in 2026 and about 43% by 2030, by my calculation.
Of the $19.2 billion the category adds over the period, roughly $13 billion comes from securing AI. The rest of the category grows from about $15.3 billion to about $21.5 billion.
Other security software is also the only category whose growth accelerates every year of the forecast, from 16.3% in 2026 to 20.1% in 2030 in constant currency. It passes enterprise endpoint protection in 2029, $31.1 billion against $30.1 billion, and finishes 2030 at $37.5 billion against $32.9 billion.
By 2030 securing AI alone, at $16 billion, is roughly the size of cloud security posture management ($16.1 billion), managed detection and response ($15.7 billion) or cloud workload protection ($15.7 billion), and larger than SIEM ($11.2 billion).
Gartner’s second AI number is larger. Gartner’s AI-amplified security forecast projects AI-amplified security, meaning existing security products with AI built in, rising from $49 billion in 2026 to $204 billion by 2030.
Each bar in the next chart equals Gartner’s 3Q26 total for that year. The navy segment is Gartner’s AI-amplified security spending. The light-blue segment is everything else in the information security market, calculated by subtracting AI-amplified spending from the total.
Each segment shows its dollars and its share of that year’s total. The indigo note repeats Gartner’s securing AI figures, which sit inside other security software rather than in the AI-amplified total.
Everything else, the light-blue segment, shrinks from $182.9 billion (95%) in 2024 to $168.4 billion (45%) in 2030, even as the total nearly doubles.
AI-amplified security spending as a share of total information security spending, 2024 to 2030. Data from Gartner, Forecast Analysis: AI-Amplified Security, Worldwide, 2026 (August 2026) and Gartner G00862059 (September 2026). The share combines two Gartner forecasts and is an illustrative softwarestrategiesblog.com calculation, not a Gartner-published ratio.
Set against the 3Q26 totals, AI-amplified spending rises from 20% of the market in 2026 to 39% in 2028, 47% in 2029 and 55% in 2030. Treat that as an illustration of direction, since the two forecasts were built separately.
By the end of the decade, most security dollars will buy products where AI does part of the detection, triage or response work.
Gartner’s report expects AI code security assistants and cybersecurity AI assistants to automate event triage, false-positive reduction and code remediation, and it expects organizations to shift from reactive defense toward continuous threat exposure management (CTEM).
North America is 53% of 2030 spending, and China grows fastest
On the left, the chart shows each region’s 2030 spending in current dollars and its share of the world total. On the right is each region’s 2025 to 2030 CAGR in constant currency. The dashed line marks the 10.8% world rate, and indigo marks China and Japan, the two fastest-growing regions.
2030 information security spending by region in current U.S. dollars and 2025-2030 CAGR in constant currency. Data from Gartner G00862059. Shares calculated by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
North America. $129.2 billion in 2026, 52.2% of the world. $197.7 billion by 2030, 53.0%. 11.4% CAGR. The United States alone reaches $181.1 billion in 2030.
Europe. $64.0 billion in 2026 to $91.3 billion by 2030. 8.6% CAGR, the slowest of the nine regions.
China. $10.7 billion in 2026, up 24.5% in current dollars. $18.7 billion by 2030. 15.4% CAGR, the fastest region.
Japan. $12.6 billion in 2026 to $22.2 billion by 2030. 13.1% CAGR, second fastest, with 17.6% constant-currency growth in 2026.
Emerging markets. Emerging Asia/Pacific grows at 11.1%, Sub-Saharan Africa at 10.5%, Latin America at 9.3%, and the Middle East and North Africa at 9.1%.
At the country level, China (16.2%), Indonesia (13.9%), Japan (13.1%) and Taiwan (12.4%) post the fastest constant-currency CAGRs among the 47 countries in the file.
All 41 categories, ranked
Growth rates spread wide across the full ranking. Seven categories grow faster than 18% a year. Twenty-nine grow below the 10.8% market rate. Two shrink.
Bars rank all 41 categories by 2025 to 2030 CAGR in constant currency. Each bar carries its CAGR, and the right-hand column lists the category’s 2030 market size in current dollars. Click the chart to open it full size.
Navy is security software, mid-blue is security services and sky blue is network security. Indigo marks the two shrinking categories, and a dashed line marks the 10.8% market rate.
All 41 information security categories ranked by 2025-2030 CAGR in constant currency, with 2030 market size in current U.S. dollars. Data from Gartner G00862059. Ranking by softwarestrategiesblog.com.
Network access control declines at a 17.7% CAGR, from $922 million in 2026 to $382 million in 2030. Intrusion detection and prevention systems fall at 8.3% a year, from $785 million to $548 million.
Both sit inside network security equipment, the same subsegment where firewalls, zero trust network access and network detection and response all grow. My read is that standalone network appliances are being absorbed into firewall platforms and ZTNA, which is consistent with Gartner’s comments on platform consolidation.
User authentication grows at 3.1%, the slowest positive rate in the forecast, while access management grows at 9.2% to $12.1 billion and identity governance and administration at 10.2% to $7.1 billion. My read is that identity spending is shifting from the login event to governing who and what holds access.
A reading note on Gartner’s Table 1
Readers working from the PDF of the Gartner information security forecast should check the growth columns in Table 1. For the last three rows, the growth rates appear offset by one row. The table shows 16.3% to 20.1% growth next to security consulting services and 9.0% to 5.6% next to other security software.
Gartner’s detailed dataset shows the reverse. Other security software accelerates from 16.3% to 20.1%, security consulting services slows from 9.6% to 5.0%, and security professional services slows from 9.0% to 5.6%. The dollar values in the table are correct. Every growth rate in this post comes from the detailed file.
What security leaders should do with this forecast
Inventory every firewall and VPN concentrator for PQC capability now. Gartner’s refresh window opens in 2027 for government, financial services and defense. Organizations that sell into those sectors, or connect to them, will face the same questions in their own procurement and supplier reviews. Ask vendors which appliance generations support ML-KEM in hardware at full inspection throughput, and get the answer in writing.
Budget the refresh as a 2027 and 2028 capital item. Gartner’s revision adds $1.08 billion to 2027 and another $0.43 billion in 2028, then only $0.26 billion and $0.07 billion more in 2029 and 2030. Waiting for 2029 means buying when lead times and pricing reflect peak demand.
Plan for securing AI as a line item, not a pilot. At $16 billion by 2030, securing AI will be comparable in size to CSPM and MDR. Governance gaps are already visible. Gartner’s first AI governance hype cycle found 34% of enterprises govern AI with policies they only partly follow, which I covered in Gartner’s 2026 AI Governance Hype Cycle.
Push cloud security consolidation. CSPM, CASB and CWPP are the three fastest-growing categories, and Gartner lists SSE and CNAPP adoption alongside tool consolidation and cost control as 2027 budget priorities. Consolidating onto those platforms is the most direct way to fund the growth without adding consoles and contracts.
Re-test services contracts against AI-assisted operations. Services share drops from 39.3% to 33.6% by 2030. Managed security operations still adds $7.0 billion, so outsourcing is not shrinking. What changes is the mix of human hours and AI triage inside each contract, and pricing should reflect it.
Frequently asked questions
How much will worldwide information security spending be in 2026? Gartner forecasts $247.5 billion in 2026, up 13.6% in current U.S. dollars and 12.7% in constant currency.
How big will the security market be by 2030? $372.8 billion, which Gartner frames as $373 billion and a 10.8% constant-currency CAGR from 2025 through 2030.
What changed in the 3Q26 Gartner information security forecast? Firewall equipment growth for 2027 rose to 13.4% from 7.8% in constant currency, driven by post-quantum firewall refreshes. Every other business category kept its constant-currency outlook from June.
Which security category grows fastest? Cloud security posture management, at a 27.6% CAGR from 2025 to 2030, reaching $16.1 billion.
How large is the securing AI market? Gartner sizes securing AI at $3 billion in 2026 and $16 billion by 2030, counted inside other security software.
How I built this analysis
All market sizes are Gartner end-user spending from the 3Q26 detailed forecast file (G00862059), in current U.S. dollars unless noted. All growth rates and CAGRs are constant currency, matching Gartner’s reporting convention, with 2024 as the constant-currency base year.
Revisions compare the 3Q26 and 2Q26 (G00855892) detailed files category by category in constant currency, which separates forecast changes from exchange-rate effects. Dollar additions, shares, rankings, regional splits and the AI-amplified ratio are my calculations.
Securing AI figures ($3 billion in 2026, $16 billion by 2030) are Gartner’s, as stated in the 3Q26 report. The AI-amplified figures come from Gartner’s August 2026 AI-amplified security forecast.
