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Posts tagged ‘securing AI’

Oct 5

Gartner’s $247.5B security forecast makes post-quantum firewall refreshes the only upgrade through 2030

Gartner information security forecast 2024 to 2030 showing spending rising from $192.9 billion to $372.8 billion by software, services, network and consumer security, with six KPI tiles below the chart for 2026 and 2030 totals, new spending, the firewall revision, 2027 firewall growth and securing AI
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).

For the 2Q26 update that first counted securing AI inside the forecast, see Gartner’s $248.2B security forecast makes securing AI the only segment accelerating through 2030.

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.

Security software share rising from 49.6% in 2024 to 55.6% in 2030 while services fall from 39.3% to 33.6%
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.

Gartner 3Q26 versus 2Q26 information security forecast revisions in constant currency, showing firewall equipment as the only category raised, by $1.08 billion in 2027 rising to $1.84 billion in 2030, with all other 40 categories unchanged
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 growth in 2027 raised to 13.4% from 7.8% in Gartner's 2Q26 forecast
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 revision by region with North America adding $834 million and Europe $414 million
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 2026 worldwide information security spending as published in each quarterly update: $244.2 billion in 4Q25, $246.2 billion in 1Q26, $248.2 billion in 2Q26 and $247.5 billion in 3Q26
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.

Pareto chart of 15 security categories capturing 76% of $125.4 billion in new spending from 2026 to 2030
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.

Endpoint protection platforms (enterprise). +$11.7 billion, from $21.3 billion to $32.9 billion.

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.

Ten fastest-growing security categories led by cloud security posture management at a 27.6% CAGR
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.
  1. Cloud security posture management. 27.6% CAGR. $6.3 billion in 2026 to $16.1 billion in 2030.
  2. Cloud access security brokers. 24.3%. $2.8 billion to $6.5 billion.
  3. Cloud workload protection platforms. 21.0%. $7.5 billion to $15.7 billion.
  4. Zero trust network access. 20.9%. $3.0 billion to $6.4 billion. The fastest-growing network security category.
  5. Threat intelligence. 19.0%. $3.1 billion to $6.1 billion.
  6. Consent and preference management. 18.6%. $1.0 billion to $2.0 billion.
  7. Other security software, including securing AI. 18.5%. $18.3 billion to $37.5 billion.
  8. Network detection and response. 12.4%. $2.6 billion to $4.1 billion.
  9. Subject rights request automation. 12.3%. $1.5 billion to $2.3 billion.
  10. 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.

Gartner Figure 1 bubble chart of 2030 information security segment opportunities by size and growth
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.

I covered the full AI-amplified forecast in Gartner’s AI security forecast exposes 162x services growth that still trails software 2 to 1 in new spending.

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 rising from 20% of security spending in 2026 to 55% in 2030
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 security spending by region with North America at $197.7 billion and China growing fastest at 15.4%
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 Gartner security categories ranked by CAGR, with network access control and IDPS shrinking
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.

Earlier analysis in this series:

For each month’s AI agent attacks, exploited CVEs and breaches with primary sources, see my monthly AI security news briefing.

This post is my personal analysis of Gartner’s information security research and does not represent my employer.

Sources

Aug 17

Gartner’s AI security forecast exposes 162x services growth that still trails software 2 to 1 in new spending

Gartner AI-amplified security forecast, growth multiple versus net-new dollars by segment, 2024 to 2030

Growth multiple versus net-new dollars added, 2024 to 2030. The segment ranking inverts between the two measures.

Every chart and table in this analysis opens full size when you click it.

Security services inside Gartner’s AI-amplified security market were worth $364 million in 2024. Gartner now projects $59 billion by 2030. That is 162 times larger in six years, compounding at 133.5% annually, the steepest curve anywhere in the forecast. I have tracked this forecast through every quarterly update, and no segment has ever moved like this one.

What Is AI-Amplified Security?

Gartner’s term for the share of existing security spending flowing to products with AI built in. Endpoint protection, firewalls, identity, and network security that now embed AI-driven detection, autonomous remediation, and agent-based response. Not a new category. Existing budgets redirecting toward AI-native capabilities. The companion forecast for securing AI itself reaches $16.4 billion in 2030. Gartner publicly confirms the 75%-by-2028 adoption projection.

The share table and the dollar table tell different stories. Software’s share of this market falls from 87.1% to 61.3%, and services picks up almost every point software gives up. Read only that and you conclude software is losing. Run the arithmetic on net-new spending and software still collects $116.5 billion of the $194.4 billion the market adds between 2024 and 2030. That is 60 cents of every new dollar, and it puts software ahead of services 2 to 1 on net-new spending.

Both things are true at once, and the gap between them is where security budgets get set wrong.

The numbers come from Gartner’s Forecast Analysis: AI-Amplified Security, Worldwide, 2026 (G00846160, August 4, 2026) by Shailendra Upadhyay. It is the first time Gartner has split AI-amplified security into software, services, and network security across a full seven-year window. The totals reconcile cleanly with the 2Q26 AI spending forecast, which carried AI-amplified security at $204.5 billion in 2030 without breaking out the segments underneath it.

This is a slice of the security budget, not an addition to it

The note states plainly that AI-amplified security is a subset of the information security forecast and that the spending is not additive. It points readers to the 2Q26 information security forecast, the one where securing AI became the only accelerating segment, for the parent view.

Keep the two straight. AI-amplified security is AI defending the enterprise, and it reaches $204 billion by 2030. Securing AI is the enterprise defending its own models, pipelines, and agents, at $16.4 billion in the same year. Roughly twelve dollars of AI-powered defense for every dollar spent protecting the AI doing the defending.

Key findings

  • $204.5 billion by 2030, up from $10.0 billion in 2024. A 65.3% CAGR and 20.4x expansion. Gartner projects that by 2028, over 75% of enterprises will use AI-amplified cybersecurity products for most use cases, up from less than 25% in 2025. AI inside the product is table stakes, not a differentiator.
  • Security services grows from $364 million to $59.0 billion. Share climbs from 3.6% to 28.9%, absorbing 25.3 of the 25.8 points software gives up. The skills gap is the engine.
  • Security software reaches $125.3 billion and still wins the dollars. Share drops 25.8 points, but software adds $116.5 billion in net-new spending against services’ $58.7 billion. Services leads on rate and share. Software leads on absolute money.
  • Network security reaches $20.1 billion at a 66.8% CAGR. Its share dips to 8.3% in 2027 before recovering to 9.8% in 2030. Autonomous agents for network security operations are the catalyst.
  • The largest annual increment lands at the end. The market adds $14.3 billion in 2024-25 and $44.0 billion in 2029-30. Growth rates fall from 143% to 27% over the same span. Budget to increments, not rates.
  • 72% of organizations already deploy AI with a third-party vendor. Only 27% rely primarily on internal resources, per Gartner’s 2025 AI Buying Behavior Survey of 556 respondents. That split is where the services forecast comes from.
  • Code analysis leads GenAI security adoption at 22% in production. Combined in-use and piloting reaches 52%. Threat hunting sits at 18% in use with the highest planning rate of any use case at 44%.
  • About one-third of network security tasks are automated today. Even fewer use AI. That gap is where the $20.1 billion network security forecast originates.
Gartner AI-amplified security market by segment, US dollars, 2024 to 2030

AI-amplified security by segment, 2024 to 2030.

Gartner AI-amplified security market forecast by segment, US dollars millions, 2024 to 2030

Why services is the story, and where that story stops

Gartner’s 2025 AI Buying Behavior Survey quantifies the build-versus-buy split across 556 respondents. 57% deploy AI using both internal resources and third-party vendors. 27% rely primarily on internal resources. 15% go primarily through third-party vendors. Add the first and third and 72% of AI deployments already run through an outside partner.

Services did not grow 162x because buyers developed a taste for consultants. It grew because most organizations cannot staff the alternative. ISC2 measured a global cybersecurity workforce gap of 4.8 million professionals in its 2024 study, a gap that widened 19% year over year while the active workforce stayed flat. Gartner’s note describes service providers investing heavily to claim early leadership and running well ahead of their own clients in applying AI internally.

Here is the part the share chart hides. Software still captures 59.9% of all net-new spending in this market through 2030, against 30.2% for services and 9.9% for network security. A vendor reading the share decline as an exit signal would be misreading it. The software line is growing 14.3x in absolute terms while losing share to a segment growing from almost nothing.

Some CISOs will argue that services dependency creates lock-in they will pay for later. That argument is sound. It also lost. Gartner’s own numbers show in-house operation of AI security tooling has not scaled for the majority, and the 72% third-party figure is the receipt.

Growth rates decelerate while dollar increments keep climbing

Year-over-year growth falls from 142.7% in 2024-25 to 27.4% in 2029-30. That deceleration is normal for a market scaling from $10 billion to $204 billion. Services alone stays above 35% every year of the forecast, ending at 35.1% in 2029-30 after starting at 403%.

Year-over-year growth rate by segment, Gartner AI-amplified security forecast

Year-over-year growth rate by segment.

Net-new dollars move the opposite direction. The market adds $14.3 billion in 2024-25, $38.0 billion in 2027-28, and $44.0 billion in 2029-30. Growth rates fall by four-fifths. Annual dollar increments triple. A business case anchored to “the market grows 143%” reads as broken by 2028. A business case anchored to “the market adds $38 billion that year” still holds.

Net-new AI-amplified security spending added per year, services versus software and network

Net new spending added per year, split by services versus software and network.

Look at the split inside those bars. In 2029-30, services contributes $15.4 billion of the $44.0 billion increment. Software and network contribute $28.7 billion. Even in the final year of the forecast, when services carries its highest share of the market, it is still the minority of new money.

The structural shift that defines this forecast

Software’s share falls 25.8 points across the forecast period. Services absorbs 25.3 of them. Network security ends roughly where it started, though not in a straight line, dipping to 8.3% in 2027 before recovering to 9.8% by 2030.

AI-amplified security segment share shift, 2024 to 2030

Segment share of the total AI-amplified security market.

AI-amplified security segment share shift, 2024 to 2030

The mechanism is staffing, not preference. Organizations bought AI security software intending to run it themselves. The services curve records what happened next. The $3.6 billion in venture funding flowing to agentic AI security startups confirms where the market believes the answer sits, and the acquisition wave underneath it says incumbents agree.

GenAI security adoption is broader than the in-use numbers suggest

Gartner’s 2025 Cybersecurity Innovations in AI Risk Management and Use Survey polled 302 cybersecurity leaders between March 21 and May 9, 2025. Fewer than 25% of organizations use GenAI for cybersecurity today. More than 60% are piloting or planning it. Gartner warns that without a clear strategy, many of these initiatives land as superficial implementations with high project turnover, driven by executive pressure rather than operational need.

Piloting is not aspiration. It means budget allocated, vendor selected, and a proof of concept running. Combine in-use and piloting and code analysis reaches 52%, user behavior analytics 51%, vulnerability detection 47%, and incident response 46%. The $204 billion endpoint assumes most of those pilots convert.

GenAI cybersecurity adoption by use case, 2025 Gartner survey

GenAI cybersecurity adoption by use case.

GenAI cybersecurity adoption by use case, 2025 Gartner survey

Threat hunting carries the highest planning rate in the survey at 44%, against 18% in production. No other use case has that much committed intent sitting ahead of deployment. When those budgets convert, threat hunting moves fastest in the next survey update.

Autonomous agents move from concept to production in network security

Human-centric operating models cannot absorb the scale, threat velocity, and traffic diversity that AI-driven workloads generate. Gartner describes AI-amplified network security agents that operate without predetermined workflows, adapt to security events nobody scripted, and handle threat detection, policy enforcement, and incident response while people supervise and validate rather than execute.

The trust curve is the constraint. By 2029, Gartner projects 10% of organizations will run autonomous agents with no human oversight for network security operations, up from less than 1% in 2026. Ten percent in three years is not a mass market. It is enough to reprice the segment, and the $20.1 billion forecast reflects that repricing. For how these agent numbers stack against other estimates, see my roundup of agentic AI forecasts and market estimates.

One number in the note worth checking before you quote it

Gartner’s note carries two different 2026 figures. The opening summary describes the market rising from $49 billion in 2026 to $204 billion by 2030. A later passage describes it reaching $204 billion in 2030, up from $81 billion in 2026. Table 1 puts 2026 at $48.5 billion and 2027 at $81.2 billion.

The table is the authority, and $49 billion is the number consistent with it. It also matches the $48.5 billion AI-amplified figure I reported in March from the prior forecast cycle. Anyone quoting $81 billion as a 2026 figure is quoting 2027.

What this forecast changes for CISOs and security vendors

  • Reassess build versus buy, then budget for both. The 72% third-party figure is an organizational verdict on in-house feasibility. Plan services into the operating model rather than bolting it on. Do not read the share shift as permission to stop buying software, because software still takes 60% of the new dollars.
  • Anchor business cases to dollar increments. The market adds $38.0 billion in 2027-28 and $44.0 billion in 2029-30. Those numbers stay correct. Growth percentages will look wrong inside two years.
  • Move on threat hunting next. It has the highest planning rate in Gartner’s survey at 44% against 18% in production. Organizations that move before the pipeline converts will have more mature detection models when it does.
  • Grade vendors on services delivery, not just features. A pure software licensing model captures a shrinking share of a growing market. Gartner’s note is direct about the consequence, warning that vendors who fail to operationalize AI for real-time threat detection and adaptive defense risk rapid obsolescence.
  • Start network security agent pilots now. Gartner projects 10% trusted autonomy by 2029. That leaves three budget cycles to build guardrails, validation workflows, and the evidence trail an auditor will ask for. Waiting until 2028 means arriving late with an unproven control set.
  • Watch the governance layer in parallel. Gartner’s first Hype Cycle for AI Governance puts most security-relevant governance capabilities two to five years from mainstream adoption, which is the same window in which these agents reach production.

Bottom line

I have tracked Gartner’s information security forecast through multiple quarterly updates. This is the first time the firm has published segment-level detail underneath AI-amplified security, and the segments say more than the total does. Traditional security spending is reorganizing around AI-native capability, and the delivery model is reorganizing with it.

Every CISO reading this should ask one question of their AI security strategy. Is it built around software licensing or around services delivery? The honest answer for most organizations is that it needs to be built around both, weighted differently than it is today. Services is where the growth rate lives. Software is where the money still goes.

The risk of getting this wrong is not theoretical. Forrester predicts an agentic AI deployment will cause a publicly disclosed data breach this year, leading to employee dismissals, a prediction Infosecurity Magazine reported when senior analyst Paddy Harrington framed it as a cascade of failures rather than a single point of error. Gartner’s forecast prices the defense. It does not schedule it.

Related on Software Strategies Blog

Source and methodology

All market sizing data from Gartner, Forecast Analysis: AI-Amplified Security, Worldwide, 2026, published August 4, 2026 (ID G00846160), by Shailendra Upadhyay. AI-amplified security is a subset of the information security forecast and this is not additive spending. Survey data from the 2025 Gartner AI Buying Behavior Survey (n=556, fielded November through December 2025 across North America, Western Europe, and Asia/Pacific, organizations with $50 million or more in enterprisewide revenue) and the 2025 Gartner Cybersecurity Innovations in AI Risk Management and Use Survey (n=302, fielded March 21 through May 9, 2025, organizations with $250 million or more in fiscal 2024 revenue). Gartner notes that neither survey represents global findings or the market as a whole.

CAGR, growth multiples, market share percentages, year-over-year growth rates, incremental spending, net-new dollar allocation, and combined adoption rates computed by Software Strategies Blog from Gartner’s published segment data. Segment values are independently rounded by Gartner and do not always sum to the stated totals. All charts are original visualizations created by Software Strategies Blog.

For each month’s AI agent attacks, exploited CVEs and breaches with primary sources, see my monthly AI security news briefing.

This post is my personal reflection on Gartner’s AI-amplified security research from an industry analyst perspective. It does not represent my employer.

Aug 5

Gartner’s $5.95 trillion AI forecast puts the chatbot era on a 2027 deadline

Spending on the chatbots and assistants embedded in enterprise software peaks at $272.6 billion in 2027 and then shrinks every year through 2030. Gartner buried that projection inside the 2Q26 update of its worldwide AI spending forecast, published July 24, and it matters more than the headline total. By 2030, embedded chatbot spending falls back to $205.8 billion, a hair above its 2025 starting point.

Embedded agenticAI takes the money instead, growing from $88.2 billion in 2025 to $1 trillion by 2030, an 11.4x expansion inside a single software category.

None of that slows the topline. Worldwide AI spending reaches $2.67 trillion in 2026, up 49.5% from 2025, on its way to $5.95 trillion by 2030. The figure Gartner published in May was $2.59 trillion for this year. Ninety days later, the client-facing number runs $74.8 billion higher, and the firm added $496.8 billion to its comparable 2025 through 2030 outlook in a single quarter.

Four tables below show where the money lands, which segments stall, and what Gartner changed its mind about between April and July.

Where $5.95 trillion lands

Infrastructure stays the biggest line through 2030 at $2.79 trillion, even as its share of total spending slides from 55% in 2025 to 46.9% at the end of the window. AI-optimized servers alone reach $981.7 billion by 2030, a 3.4x jump from 2025, and AI processing semiconductors add another $656.4 billion. O

One caution before quoting the total anywhere. Gartner’s note flags the forecast as a view across the whole AI value chain, so the chip and the server it ships inside both get counted. Read $5.95 trillion as the size of the AI economy, not as net end-user budgets.

Devices carry more of the infrastructure number than most readers expect. Business and consumer AI devices combine for $904.4 billion in 2030, and $647.4 billion of that is consumer hardware, the AI PCs and phones landing in shopping carts rather than data centers.

Growth flattens fast after next year. Total spending rises 49% in 2026 and 36% in 2027, then steps down to 21%, 18% and 15% through 2030, while infrastructure decelerates from 51% growth this year to 9% at the end of the forecast.

Of the $883.8 billion in net-new AI spending arriving in 2026, infrastructure absorbs $502.5 billion, or 57 cents of every new dollar. The shape of the curve says the buildout peaks now and software inherits the growth.

Farther down the board, AI cybersecurity at $220.9 billion and AI agents and assistants at $219.9 billion finish 2030 within $1 billion of each other. Gartner created the agents category only this quarter.

Agentic AI crosses $1 trillion inside enterprise software

Gartner rebuilt its segmentation this quarter, splitting cross-functional and consumer agents out of AI software and adding consumer agents to the forecast for the first time. The new structure exposes a replacement cycle the old rollup hid. Inside enterprise software, agentic AI overtakes chatbots in 2027, the same year chatbot spending tops out, and from that peak to 2030 the embedded chatbot line surrenders $66.8 billion.

Cross-functional agents, the ones that work across software from multiple vendors, start from a base of zero. Gartner books $347 million for cross-functional agentic AI in 2026 and $78.1 billion in 2030, a number it raised this quarter on the thesis that these agents begin cannibalizing traditional SaaS by decade’s end. The ceiling matters as much as the curve. Against $1.21 trillion in total 2030 AI software spending, $78.1 billion says the incumbents hold the decade, because data access, integration complexity and execution reliability hold the category back from serious SaaS competition until 2030, in Gartner’s read.

The buy-versus-build verdict is just as lopsided. Agent builder platforms, the tooling for constructing your own agents, reach only $12.6 billion by 2030, so embedded agentic AI outspends them nearly 80 to 1. The first production agent most companies run will ship inside software they already own. Gartner describes exactly that race, with vendors across software categories embedding agentic AI to defend their installed bases against cross-functional challengers.

Consumer agents barely register yet in dollar terms. Gartner carries $26.9 million for consumer agentic AI in 2026, then $17.7 billion in 2027 as paid consumer agents arrive at scale, building to $51.8 billion by 2030. Adding consumer agents and assistants lifted Gartner’s 2030 total by $133 billion. For how these agent numbers stack against other analyst estimates, see my roundup of agentic AI forecasts and market estimates, 2026.

AI security expands 8.5x and splits in two

AI cybersecurity grows from $25.9 billion in 2025 to $220.9 billion in 2030, an 8.5x expansion at a 53.5% compound rate. Spending in the category grew 140% in 2025, and Gartner models another 98% jump this year. AI cybersecurity and AI data were also the only two markets left completely untouched between the 1Q26 and 2Q26 forecasts, which makes security the steadiest conviction in the entire model. For the standalone security spending outlook, see my breakdown of Gartner’s 2Q26 information security forecast.

Two markets move at different speeds inside the category. AI-amplified security, meaning AI capability inside security tooling, carries the volume and reaches $204.5 billion by 2030. Securing AI, the discipline of protecting AI systems themselves, runs smaller and faster, from $1.5 billion in 2025 to $16.4 billion in 2030 at a 60.4% compound rate.

Set the security numbers against the agent forecast and an exposure gap opens. The 2030 outlook has enterprises running $1.08 trillion of embedded and cross-functional agentic software while spending $16.4 billion to secure AI systems, roughly $66 of agentic software for every $1 of securing-AI budget. AI observability and governance tooling adds just $3.9 billion more. A software wave that large riding on a security ratio that thin is the budget argument CISOs should be starting now.

The fastest growth goes to whatever cuts the bill

Rank every segment by compound growth and one pattern jumps out, because the fastest-growing lines are the ones that make AI cheaper. Synthetic data generation leads the entire forecast at a 142.5% compound rate, expanding 84x from $146 million in 2025 to $12.2 billion in 2030. AI-ready datasets, the licensed real-data alternative, peak at $583 million in 2029 and then decline, leaving synthetic data outselling licensed data 22 to 1 by 2030. Gartner is forecasting the substitution of purchased data itself.

Domain-specific language models tell the same cost story at larger scale. DSLMs and specialized models grow 210% in 2026 and compound at 84.5% through 2030, rising from 12.2% of all model spend to 24.3%. Cost pressure also explains the strangest revision in the update. Gartner cut $57.8 billion in cumulative dollars from its generative AI model forecast while raising the segment’s 2026 growth rate from 110% to 117%, which nets out to more deployments running on cheaper models and smaller checks. Arunasree Cheparthi, a senior principal research analyst at Gartner and one of the forecast’s authors, said in the firm’s July 20 platforms and models announcement that spending “is shifting toward providers who can demonstrate clear value.”

What Gartner changed in 90 days

Between the April forecast and this one, Gartner added $500.8 billion to AI infrastructure across the 2025 through 2030 window, the largest revision in the update, and did it while flagging memory-related price increases. The note calls infrastructure demand inelastic to that pricing pressure, because hyperscalers keep buying AI-optimized servers on the conviction that model capabilities improve through 2030.

Software took the other side of the trade. AI software gained $191.9 billion and application development platforms picked up $10.7 billion. Gartner lifted the 2026 app-dev growth rate from 28% to 39% as enterprises build custom AI applications and demand usage tracking to prove the spend. The cuts land on everything that resembles consulting or plumbing. AI services lost $80.7 billion across the window, with every single year revised down, and platforms for data science and machine learning lost $68.2 billion, including an 8% cut to 2027 alone.

The services cut hides a structural shift rather than a retreat. Gartner still sizes AI services at $1.25 trillion in 2030, but the growth belongs to indirect services, which compound at 34.5% and pass direct, consulting-led engagements in 2028. Direct AI services compound at 15.7%, less than half the indirect rate. Buyers are routing transformation budgets through software and cloud purchases instead of billable hours.

Three dates to plan against

2027 is the year chatbot spending tops out and agentic AI takes over inside enterprise software, which gives any vendor still selling assistant-branded features through the end of next year to ride what growth remains. By 2028, indirect services pass consulting-led engagements and infrastructure growth drops to 15%, so the buildout stops flattering everyone’s numbers. And 2030 arrives with $1.08 trillion of agentic software guarded by $16.4 billion of securing-AI spend. The first two dates decide where the money goes, and the third decides what happens when it arrives unprotected.

This post is my personal reflection on Gartner’s AI spending research from an industry analyst perspective. It does not represent my employer.

Source: Gartner, Forecast: AI Spending, Worldwide, 2025-2030, 2Q26, Kay Arnott, Jon Erensen, Amarendra, Adrian O’Connell, Arunasree Cheparthi, Naresh Singh, Peter Middleton, Hardeep Singh, Shailendra Upadhyay, Rishi Padhi, 24 July 2026, G00855896.

Jul 6

Gartner securing AI forecast, 2Q26: securing AI turns Other Security Software into the only accelerating segment, 16.3% to 20.1% by 2030

Gartner’s $248.2B security forecast makes securing AI the only segment accelerating through 2030

Gartner's 2Q26 information security forecast puts 2026 spending at $248.2B and adds securing AI for the first time, making other security software the only segment accelerating through 2030.

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