Cybersecurity Spending Statistics 2026
By Axis Intelligence Research
Co-author: Marcus Chen, Cybersecurity Editor | Last updated: July 8, 2026 | License: CC BY 4.0
Global information security spending reaches $248.9 billion in 2026, up 12.7% year-over-year according to Gartner’s 2Q26 forecast published June 25, 2026. That figure will grow to $372.6 billion by 2030. Security software is the fastest-growing segment; cloud security posture management leads all 41 tracked categories at a 33.4% growth rate. The only category accelerating through 2030 is “securing AI” — which didn’t exist as a distinct budget line before this quarter.
Quick Answer
Global cybersecurity spending hits $248.9 billion in 2026 (Gartner, June 2026), up from $193 billion in 2024 — a 28.9% rise in two years. The U.S. accounts for roughly 44% of that total. Cloud security posture management is the fastest-growing subcategory at 33.4% (Gartner 1Q26). Gartner’s 2Q26 update introduces “securing AI” as a distinct segment for the first time; it captures more new dollars through 2030 than any other category. Meanwhile, the average data breach costs $4.44 million globally and $10.22 million in the United States (IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025) — a divergence that matters for how CISOs justify spend to their boards.
Key Findings
- Global information security spending reaches $248.9 billion in 2026, a 12.7% constant-currency increase year-over-year, and is projected to hit $372.6 billion by 2030, according to Gartner’s Forecast: Information Security, Worldwide, 2Q26 (G00855892, June 25, 2026).
- Securing AI is now the only accelerating segment in Gartner’s forecast, growing from 16.3% in 2026 to a projected 20.1% by 2030, and is expected to surpass endpoint protection platforms as the largest security category by 2029 — adding $21.9 billion in new spending through 2030.
- The U.S. average data breach cost hit a record $10.22 million in 2025, 130% above the global average of $4.44 million (IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025), even as global costs fell 9% — the first decline in five years.
- Axis Intelligence Research estimates the Cybersecurity Spend Coverage Ratio™ (CSCR™) at 7.42 for 2026, up from 5.24 in 2024 — meaning the world now spends $7.42 in cybersecurity for every $1 of estimated disclosed-breach financial exposure, a 41.6% expansion of that ratio in two years.
- CISA’s enacted FY2026 budget lands at approximately $2.6 billion, well below the agency’s FY2025 baseline of roughly $3 billion after workforce reductions of approximately one-third — creating a structural tension between private-sector spending acceleration and public-sector defense contraction.
How Much Does the World Spend on Cybersecurity in 2026?
The headline: $248.9 billion. That is Gartner’s 2Q26 figure, published June 25, 2026, from its Forecast: Information Security, Worldwide, 2024–2030 (G00855892). It is the most current available estimate from the primary issuing organization.
The number has been revised upward three times this year. The 4Q25 forecast (December 2025) had it at $244.2 billion. The 1Q26 update (March 2026) raised it to $246.2 billion. The 2Q26 update added another $2.7 billion. Two upward revisions in one calendar quarter. The trajectory keeps steepening.
Constant-currency growth is 12.7% — meaningful because cybersecurity is a global market and exchange-rate swings can distort the current-dollar figure. The constant-currency figure strips that out.
Two caveats worth stating plainly. First, Gartner measures “end-user spending” — what organizations actually purchase. Vendor revenues, R&D, and internal labor costs are excluded. Second, multiple analysts publish cybersecurity market figures with different methodological scopes; Gartner is the most comparable across time and is used as the primary source throughout this article because it publishes quarterly updates with consistent methodology.
For context, cybersecurity now represents approximately 4.1% of total global IT spending (Gartner projects $6.15 trillion in IT spend for 2026). The share has been rising: global information security spending was about 3.5% of IT in 2024.
Cybersecurity Spending Growth Trajectory 2021–2030
| Year | Global InfoSec Spend | YoY Growth | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | ~$150B | — | Gartner historical |
| 2022 | ~$165B | ~10% | Gartner historical |
| 2023 | ~$188B | ~14% | Gartner (Cybersecurity Dive) |
| 2024 | $193B | 15.1% | Gartner Forecast: Information Security 2024 |
| 2025 | $218.2B | 13.1% | Gartner 2Q26 (G00855892) |
| 2026 | $248.9B | 12.7% | Gartner 2Q26 (G00855892, June 25, 2026) |
| 2030 (proj.) | $372.6B | 10.7% CAGR | Gartner 2Q26 (G00855892, June 25, 2026) |
Sources: Gartner, Forecast: Information Security, Worldwide, 2Q26 (G00855892), published June 25, 2026; Gartner historical forecasts via newsroom.
Where Is the Money Going? Cybersecurity Spending by Segment
Gartner’s 1Q26 update (G00846158, March 2026) provides the most granular breakdown by subsegment available from the primary source. The 2Q26 update held the overall subsegment structure while revising specific category totals upward.
Subsegment Spending and Growth, 2025–2026
| Subsegment | 2025 ($B) | 2026 ($B) | 2025–26 Growth | 5-yr CAGR to 2030 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cloud Security | $13.0B | $17.1B | 28.8% | 24.1% |
| Network Security Equipment | $23.3B | $27.2B | 14.8% | 9.8% |
| Infrastructure Protection | $36.4B | $42.1B | 14.2% | 11.5% |
| Data Security and Privacy | $6.7B | $7.8B | 13.9% | 11.5% |
| Application Security | $8.6B | $9.9B | 13.0% | 10.2% |
| Identity Access Management | $20.7B | $23.4B | 11.8% | 7.9% |
| Managed Security Services | $28.6B | $32.5B | 11.1% | 8.6% |
| Security Consulting Services | $26.7B | $29.8B | 9.6% | 6.8% |
| Security Professional Services | $29.8B | $33.0B | 8.3% | 6.8% |
| Other Security Software (incl. securing AI) | $15.6B | $18.2B est. | 16.3%→20.1% | 18.5% |
| Consumer Security Software | $8.6B | $9.1B | 3.7% | 3.3% |
Source: Gartner, Information Security Market Current Outlook, Worldwide, 1Q26 (G00846158), March 2026; 2Q26 (G00855892), June 25, 2026. Growth in constant currency.
Cloud Security growing at 28.8% is not accidental. Three categories inside it — Cloud Security Posture Management ($4.7B, +33.4%), Cloud Access Security Brokers ($2.3B, +27.2%), and Cloud Workload Protection Platforms ($6.0B, +25.9%) — are absorbing budget that used to go to network perimeter tools. CSPM barely existed as a category five years ago. By 2030, Gartner projects CSPM alone reaches $16.2 billion.
At the other end: Intrusion Detection and Prevention Systems (IDPS) is declining at –6.3% in 2026; Network Access Control contracts at –7.7%. These are not cyclical dips — they are structural reallocation. Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA, +23.0%) is where those dollars reappear.
The 10 Fastest-Growing Cybersecurity Categories in 2026
Marcus Chen, Cybersecurity Editor: The CSPM number at 33.4% is the important one. It tells you where the misconfiguration problem actually lives — not in endpoint agents or network sensors, but in the cloud control plane. Organizations that figured this out three years ago are now reaping the benefit in reduced dwell times. The ones still treating cloud security as a subset of network security are not.
| Rank | Category | 2025 ($B) | 2030 ($B) | 2025–26 Growth | 5-yr CAGR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cloud Security Posture Management | $4.7B | $16.1B | 33.4% | 27.6% |
| 2 | Threat Intelligence | $2.6B | $6.9B | 27.3% | 21.1% |
| 3 | Cloud Access Security Brokers | $2.3B | $7.1B | 27.2% | 24.3% |
| 4 | Cloud Workload Protection Platforms | $6.0B | $16.1B | 25.9% | 21.0% |
| 5 | Zero Trust Network Access | $2.4B | $6.4B | 23.0% | 20.9% |
| 6 | Consent and Preference Management | $0.8B | $2.0B | 22.1% | 18.6% |
| 7 | Other Security Software (incl. securing AI) | $15.6B | $37.6B | 16.3% | 18.5% |
| 8 | Subject Rights Request Automation | $1.3B | $2.3B | 16.2% | 12.3% |
| 9 | Firewall Equipment | $16.8B | $26.7B | 15.9% | 9.1% |
| 10 | Vulnerability Assessment | $3.5B | $6.4B | 15.7% | 12.0% |
Source: Gartner, Forecast: Information Security, Worldwide, 2024–2030, 2Q26 (G00855892), June 25, 2026; 1Q26 (G00846158), March 2026. CAGR in constant currency.
Two categories outside the top 10 deserve mention. Endpoint Protection Platforms ($17.8B, +14.5%) adds $14.2 billion in absolute dollars through 2030 — the largest single dollar increase of any category. And firewall equipment, which everyone keeps predicting will decline, sits at $16.8B growing at 15.9% with an $1.7B upward revision in the 1Q26 update.
The Securing AI Inflection: A New Budget Line Changes the Forecast
The 2Q26 Gartner update introduced “securing AI” as a distinct segment within Other Security Software for the first time. One accounting decision changed the trajectory of the entire forecast.
Before this change, Other Security Software was decelerating from 7.3% growth in 2026 down to 3.6% by 2030. After: the same segment now accelerates from 16.3% to 20.1% through 2030. It is the only category in Gartner’s entire dataset with a growth rate that increases every year through the forecast horizon.
The scale of what is entering this category: $21.9 billion in new spending through 2030, more than any other category. By 2029, Gartner projects it surpasses endpoint protection platforms as the largest single security budget line — $31.2 billion against $30.1 billion.
This matters for how CISOs read their own spend. The $248.9 billion figure above is not the same market as the $244.2 billion Gartner forecast six months ago. The 2Q26 revision added $19.5 billion to the 2030 outlook; the securing AI segment accounts for $20.3 billion of that. Every other segment combined registered a net reduction of approximately $800 million. The money is moving in one direction.
What Does the Average Data Breach Cost in 2026?
The 2025 IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report — the most current primary data on breach costs, covering incidents from mid-2024 through mid-2025 — is where breach cost analysis must start.
Global average: $4.44 million per breach, down 9% from $4.88 million in 2024. The first decline in five years. IBM attributes it primarily to faster detection and containment enabled by AI-powered defenses, and to a breach lifecycle that dropped to 241 days — the shortest in nine years.
The U.S. figure moved in the opposite direction: $10.22 million per breach, up from the prior year, a new record. IBM attributes the increase to higher regulatory fines and more complex breach investigations. The U.S. is not experiencing the same lifecycle improvements the global average reflects.
Average Breach Cost by Initial Attack Vector (IBM Cost of Data Breach 2025)
| Attack Vector | Avg. Cost | % of Breaches |
|---|---|---|
| Malicious insider | $4.92M | — |
| Phishing | $4.80M | 16% |
| Supply chain / third party | $4.91M | 15% |
| Compromised credentials | $4.67M | — |
| Shadow AI breach | +$0.67M premium | 20% of breaches |
Source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025, IBM Security/Ponemon Institute, published August 2025.
Average Breach Cost by Sector (IBM Cost of Data Breach 2025)
| Sector | Avg. Breach Cost | Avg. Lifecycle |
|---|---|---|
| Healthcare | $7.42M | ~9 months |
| Financial Services | ~$6.1M | — |
| Technology | ~$5.6M | — |
| Global Average | $4.44M | 241 days |
| U.S. Average | $10.22M | — |
Source: IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025.
Shadow AI is the detail most organizations are not tracking in their spend rationale. IBM found that 97% of organizations that experienced an AI-related breach lacked proper AI access controls. Shadow AI involvement in a breach added an estimated $670,000 to total cost. That is a specific financial argument for why “securing AI” is now a line item rather than an afterthought.
Marcus Chen: The U.S. figure at $10.22M is the one boards need to see. It is 2.3x the global average. Regulatory fines are not theoretical — they are the mechanism that converts a breach into a financial statement event. When the SEC’s breach disclosure rule (72-hour material incident notification) aligns with CIRCIA’s parallel requirements, the cost of slow detection compounds faster than it used to. The 241-day global average means most organizations still have weeks of dwell time they can cut, and IBM’s own data shows those cuts are worth $1.88 million per incident.
The Axis CSCR™: Measuring Cybersecurity Spend Against Breach Exposure
Axis Intelligence Research introduces the Cybersecurity Spend Coverage Ratio™ (CSCR™), a cross-source metric that quantifies the global ratio of cybersecurity investment to estimated disclosed-breach financial exposure. This figure does not exist in any primary source in this form.
CSCR™ Formula and Inputs
CSCR™ = Global InfoSec Spend ($B) ÷ (IBM Global Average Breach Cost × Estimated Global Annual Breach Incidents / 1,000)
Inputs (all primary-sourced, all from fact-table rows):
| Input | Value | Source | As-of Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Global InfoSec Spend | $248.9B | Gartner 2Q26 (G00855892) | June 25, 2026 |
| IBM Global Average Breach Cost | $4.44M | IBM Cost of Data Breach 2025 | Aug 2025 |
| U.S. Data Compromises (disclosed) | 3,322 | ITRC 2025 Annual Data Breach Report | Jan 29, 2026 |
| U.S. Share of Global InfoSec Market | 44% | Gartner / Statista 2026 | 2026 |
| Global Breach Incidents (Axis estimate) | 7,550 | 3,322 ÷ 0.44 (Axis calculation) | 2025 data |
Calculation:
- Global breach incidents estimate = 3,322 ÷ 0.44 = 7,550 (scaling U.S. disclosed compromises by U.S. market share as a proxy for global breach visibility — disclosed, not total incidents)
- Total disclosed-breach cost exposure = 7,550 × $4.44M = $33.52B
- CSCR™ 2026 = $248.9B ÷ $33.52B = 7.42
Interpretation: In 2026, the world spends $7.42 on information security for every $1 of estimated disclosed-breach financial exposure — up from $5.24 in 2024 (+41.6%).
2024 baseline for comparison:
- Global InfoSec Spend 2024: $193.0B (Gartner)
- IBM 2024 Global Avg Breach Cost: $4.88M
- CSCR™ 2024 = $193.0B ÷ ($4.88M × 7,550 / 1,000) = $193.0B ÷ $36.84B = 5.24
Limitations: The ITRC tracks U.S.-disclosed compromises only; scaling by U.S. market share is an Axis estimate with significant uncertainty. Many breaches, particularly outside the U.S., go undisclosed or unreported. The denominator (disclosed-breach exposure) understates total breach costs by a wide margin. The CSCR™ should be read as a directional ratio, not an absolute efficiency measure. The 2026 IBM report (expected late July 2026) will provide updated breach cost inputs that will revise the metric.
License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as: Axis Intelligence Research, Cybersecurity Spending Statistics 2026, axis-intelligence.com/cybersecurity-spending-statistics/.
The ratio rising does not mean cybersecurity is “winning.” It means organizations are spending substantially more per unit of measured exposure. That could reflect: (a) appropriate escalation to address AI threats and regulatory risk; (b) inefficient accumulation of tools without integration; or (c) both. Marcus Chen’s read: the CSCR™ rising 41.6% in two years while U.S. breach costs set a record suggests the composition of the spend matters as much as the volume.
U.S. Federal Cybersecurity Spending: The Structural Tension
The private sector is accelerating. The federal agency responsible for defending civilian government networks is contracting.
CISA, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, entered 2025 with approximately 3,700 employees. By mid-2025, that figure had dropped to between 2,200 and 2,600 — a reduction of roughly one-third — through a combination of layoffs, voluntary departures, and the Trump administration’s proposed budget cuts.
The FY2026 CISA budget, as enacted via the January 2026 spending agreement, lands at approximately $2.6 billion, according to CyberScoop’s reporting on the final appropriations legislation. That represents a meaningful reduction from CISA’s approximately $3 billion baseline entering the Trump administration. The final enacted level is substantially better than the Trump administration’s proposed $491 million cut, which Congress did not adopt in full — the final legislation provided $20 million specifically for CISA to hire staff in “critical positions” across threat hunting, vulnerability management, and advisory functions.
The DHS FY2026 Congressional Budget Justification requested $2.4 billion, including $1.367 billion for cybersecurity efforts to protect federal civilian networks and $302.9 million for infrastructure security. The enacted level is higher than the administration’s request, reflecting congressional resistance to the proposed scale of cuts.
The tension this creates: as private organizations accelerate toward $248.9 billion in annual spend — driven partly by compliance mandates that CISA itself shaped — the agency responsible for coordinating those mandates is operating with materially fewer resources and people. The gap between commercial spending velocity and federal defensive capacity is widening.
Marcus Chen: The CVE program nearly lapsed in April 2025. CISA retained the contract. That is not a minor operational detail — it is the indexing system for every vulnerability scanner in enterprise security. The budget cuts and the workforce reduction create single points of failure in the U.S. critical infrastructure protection apparatus that no amount of commercial security spending directly addresses.
Cybersecurity Spending by Industry: Which Sectors Are Spending Most?
Sector-level cybersecurity spending figures are harder to verify at primary-source level than total market figures, because no single primary issuing organization publishes comprehensive cross-industry spend in a single document. What the primary sources do provide:
Healthcare spends the least on cybersecurity relative to revenue (roughly 0.3–0.5% of revenue, per Forrester 2026 Budget Planning Guide cited in secondary analysis) while experiencing the highest breach costs per incident at $7.42 million (IBM 2025) and the longest detection timelines (approximately nine months, IBM 2025). That is the sector’s defining paradox: the worst breach outcomes, among the lowest security investment rates.
Financial services allocates 0.8–1.0% of revenue to security (Forrester). The sector experienced 739 data compromises in 2025 — more than any other industry — according to the ITRC 2025 Annual Data Breach Report, released January 29, 2026.
Technology firms typically exceed 0.9% of revenue, with major players well above that. Microsoft alone dedicates 34,000 full-time-equivalent engineers to security work — a figure that reflects the scale at which the largest vendors operate as much as it reflects budget norms.
For most enterprises, Forrester’s 2026 budget data (referenced in secondary analysis and not directly fetchable as a public document) indicates a typical cybersecurity budget allocation of approximately 40% to security software and platforms, 30% to internal personnel, 15% to hardware, and 15% to outsourced services — with total security spending representing 8–12% of the IT budget.
U.S. Data Compromises by Industry, 2025
| Sector | 2025 Compromises | Change from 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Financial Services | 739 | — |
| Healthcare | 534 | — |
| Professional Services | 478 | Highest growth rate |
| Manufacturing | 299 | — |
| Education | 188 | — |
Source: ITRC, 2025 Annual Data Breach Report, January 29, 2026.
The Workforce Gap’s Effect on Spending
ISC2’s 2025 Cybersecurity Workforce Study, published December 4, 2025, marks a methodological shift: the organization discontinued its headline workforce gap estimate (4.8 million unfilled roles, which was the 2024 figure) because respondents are now prioritizing skills quality over headcount. This is an important distinction for spend allocation: it suggests organizations are increasingly spending on training, AI tooling, and managed services rather than simply trying to hire their way to security.
The study — based on 16,029 cybersecurity practitioners surveyed in May–June 2025 — found:
- 33% of organizations lack resources to adequately staff their teams (ISC2 2025)
- 29% cannot afford to hire staff with the required skills (ISC2 2025)
- Budget cuts (36%) and layoffs (24%) each decreased by one percentage point from 2024 — leveling off, not reversing
- 34% report having the right level of cybersecurity staffing, up 4% from 2023
The spending implication: managed security services growing at 11.1% (Gartner 1Q26) is where the workforce gap shows up in the market. Organizations that cannot hire are buying managed SOC capacity. That category — $28.6 billion in 2025 growing to $32.5 billion in 2026 — is partly a labor market arbitrage.
AI’s Dual Role in Cybersecurity Spending
AI is reshaping both sides of the spending equation.
On the defense side: IBM’s 2025 breach cost report found that organizations using AI and automation extensively in security operations saved an average of $1.9 million per breach and reduced breach lifecycle by 80 days. That is a direct ROI figure for AI-enabled security tooling. It is also the mechanism behind the first global breach cost decline in five years.
On the offense side: IBM found that AI was involved in 16% of breaches — primarily powering more effective phishing campaigns and deepfakes. Phishing was the most common initial attack vector at 16% of all breaches studied, averaging $4.8 million per incident.
Shadow AI as risk multiplier: 97% of organizations experiencing AI-related breaches lacked proper AI access controls (IBM 2025); 63% had no formal AI governance policies. Shadow AI — unauthorized AI tools in use within organizations — was involved in 20% of breaches and added $670,000 to the average breach cost. This is what Gartner is now counting when it creates the “securing AI” budget line.
Gartner projects over 75% of enterprises will use AI-amplified cybersecurity products by 2028, up from less than 25% in 2025. That shift is already funded: the AI-amplified security market reaches $160 billion by 2029 (Gartner). The tools are getting funded. Governing what those tools run on is, as of the latest data, an afterthought for most organizations.
What Is Driving Cybersecurity Spending Growth in 2026?
Three primary forces, in order of verifiable spending impact:
1. AI-generated threat escalation: GenAI has lowered the cost of producing highly targeted phishing at scale. Gartner projects that by 2027, 17% of all cyberattacks will involve generative AI. Attackers accessed AI tools in 16% of IBM-studied breaches in 2025; that figure will rise.
2. Regulatory compulsion: NIS2 (EU), DORA (EU financial sector), SEC’s cyber disclosure rules (U.S.), and CIRCIA (U.S. critical infrastructure) create legally mandated spend floors. These are not discretionary. The Consent and Preference Management category at 22.1% growth and Subject Rights Request Automation at 16.2% growth are direct output of GDPR/CCPA/state privacy law proliferation.
3. Talent substitution: With cybersecurity skills shortages persisting — even as ISC2 reframes the problem from headcount to skills — organizations are substituting managed services and AI tooling for human labor they cannot recruit or afford. Managed Security Services at 11.1% growth is partly a labor-market consequence.
Cybersecurity Spending Statistics: Regional Comparison
The primary source with the most granularity on regional divergence in spending intentions is Forrester’s Security Planning 2026 Budget Guide, cited in secondary analysis. Direct access to that report requires a client subscription.
What the primary sources support with specificity:
MENA: Gartner published a dedicated MENA forecast in October 2025, projecting $4 billion in information security end-user spending in 2026. Security software is expected to account for 48% of that total — the largest category, ahead of services.
Asia-Pacific: 22% of organizations expect cybersecurity budget increases exceeding 10%, more than double North America’s 9% (Forrester, cited in secondary analysis). APAC is catching up after years of underinvestment relative to threat exposure.
United States: Approximately 44% of the global cybersecurity market by spend (Gartner/Statista), meaning roughly $109.5 billion of the $248.9 billion total is U.S.-generated — but with breach costs 2.3x the global average and federal defensive capacity contracting, the composition of that spend is under pressure.
Cybersecurity Spending ROI: What Does the Data Actually Show?
The question every CISO faces: is the spend working?
IBM’s 2025 data provides the clearest primary-source answer on one dimension. Organizations with AI security automation saved $1.9 million per breach — a measurable, dollar-denominated ROI on that specific category of investment. Faster breach detection (under 200 days) saved $1.88 million on average compared to breaches taking longer than 200 days.
The aggregate CSCR™ rising from 5.24 to 7.42 in two years suggests the world is spending more than double the estimated disclosed-breach exposure. That ratio rising is not evidence of waste; it reflects the reality that most of cybersecurity’s value is in incidents that did not happen. Breach cost data captures only the failures.
What the data does not support: a claim that more spending uniformly produces better outcomes. The U.S. spends the most per capita and has the highest breach costs in the world. Healthcare spends the least proportionally and has the highest sector breach costs. Composition — what is being bought and how it is being implemented — explains breach outcomes at least as well as total spend level.
Methodology
Data collection: All statistics in this article were sourced during the production session July 8, 2026. Primary sources were fetched or confirmed via web search against named primary issuing organizations.
CSCR™ calculation: Cross-source composite. Inputs: Gartner 2Q26 (G00855892, June 25, 2026) for global spend; IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2025 for average breach cost; ITRC 2025 Annual Data Breach Report (January 29, 2026) for U.S. compromise count; Gartner/Statista 2026 data for U.S. market share (44%). Global incident estimate uses U.S. disclosed compromises ÷ U.S. market share as a proxy for disclosed breach visibility globally. This methodology has documented limitations: it scales by spending share, not actual breach disclosure rates; it captures publicly disclosed incidents only; and it uses a different source for count (ITRC) versus cost (IBM). The ratio is directional, not an absolute efficiency measure. Axis Intelligence Research will update the CSCR™ quarterly as Gartner and IBM publish new data.
Gartner figures: Gartner’s website returns 403 status codes to automated requests (standard for Gartner’s bot-filtering configuration). Figures were verified via Gartner newsroom press releases (publicly available) and cross-referenced with secondary analysis citing specific Gartner report IDs (G00855892, G00846158, G00843183). URL confirmation used web search snippet matching.
IBM Cost of Data Breach: IBM’s reports page returns 403 to automated requests. Figures were cross-referenced against the IBM blog post at ibm.com/think, helpnetsecurity.com’s summary published August 4, 2025, and multiple independent breakdowns each citing specific report page numbers. IBM 2026 report is expected late July 2026 and is not yet available; 2025 figures are the most current.
ISC2: ISC2’s 2025 Cybersecurity Workforce Study figures are taken from the December 4, 2025 press release on isc2.org and confirmed against the study summary page. ISC2 discontinued its headline workforce gap estimate in 2025.
ITRC: ITRC 2025 Annual Data Breach Report published January 29, 2026, sourced from ITRC’s press release and PRNewswire distribution. U.S.-disclosed compromises only; not comparable to global incident counts.
CISA budget: CISA FY2026 figures from DHS FY2026 Congressional Budget Justification (dhs.gov, June 2025) and CyberScoop/Federal News Network reporting on the January 2026 appropriations agreement.
Limitations: (1) The IBM 2026 breach cost report (expected July 2026) will materially affect the CSCR™ calculation and breach cost section. (2) Regional spend breakdowns below total-market level rely on Forrester data that is not publicly accessible; those figures are sourced from secondary analysis. (3) Sector-level cybersecurity spend as a percentage of revenue relies on Forrester client-research data cited in secondary analysis, not fetched directly.
About This Dataset
The accompanying CSV file (cybersecurity-spending-statistics.csv) is the fact table for this article. Every quantitative claim in the prose exists as a row in the CSV with source columns. The dataset covers global and U.S. cybersecurity spending, breach cost data, subsegment and category breakdowns, workforce figures, and the CSCR™ proprietary metric. It spans 2021–2030 (historical and projected).
License: CC BY 4.0. Reuse and redistribution permitted with attribution. Citation: Axis Intelligence Research (2026). Cybersecurity Spending Statistics 2026. Axis Intelligence. axis-intelligence.com/cybersecurity-spending-statistics/ Review trigger: Gartner 3Q26 forecast release (expected October 2026) or IBM Cost of a Data Breach Report 2026 publication (expected late July 2026), whichever comes first. Dataset availability: CSV distributed with this article; also available via Hugging Face, Kaggle, and GitHub.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does the world spend on cybersecurity in 2026?
Global information security spending reaches $248.9 billion in 2026, according to Gartner’s 2Q26 forecast (G00855892, published June 25, 2026). That figure is up from $193 billion in 2024 and is projected to reach $372.6 billion by 2030.
What is the fastest-growing cybersecurity segment in 2026?
Cloud Security Posture Management (CSPM) leads all 41 categories tracked by Gartner at 33.4% growth in 2026, with a 27.6% five-year CAGR. Threat Intelligence (+27.3%) and Cloud Access Security Brokers (+27.2%) are second and third. The Cloud Security subsegment overall grows at 28.8% — the fastest of all 11 major subsegments.
What is the average cost of a data breach in 2026?
The most current primary data is from IBM’s 2025 Cost of a Data Breach Report (covering incidents through mid-2025): the global average is $4.44 million, down 9% from $4.88 million in 2024 — the first decline in five years. The U.S. average hit a record $10.22 million in 2025. IBM’s 2026 report is expected in late July 2026 and will provide more current figures.
Why is U.S. breach cost so much higher than the global average?
IBM attributes the U.S. premium to higher regulatory fines, more complex breach investigations, and slower containment in specific sectors. The U.S. average at $10.22 million is 130% above the global average of $4.44 million — and that gap has been widening, not narrowing, even as global costs fell. The IBM breach lifecycle study shows the U.S. is not closing detection time gaps as quickly as regions where AI-powered detection is more broadly adopted.
What is the Cybersecurity Spend Coverage Ratio (CSCR™)?
The CSCR™ is a proprietary metric developed by Axis Intelligence Research that measures global cybersecurity investment relative to estimated disclosed-breach financial exposure. The 2026 CSCR™ is 7.42 — meaning the world spends $7.42 in security for every $1 of estimated disclosed-breach cost. This is up from 5.24 in 2024 (+41.6%). The metric uses Gartner spend figures, IBM breach costs, and ITRC U.S. compromise data. See the Methodology section for formula, inputs, and limitations.
How does cybersecurity spending relate to the workforce shortage?
ISC2’s 2025 Cybersecurity Workforce Study (December 4, 2025, surveying 16,029 practitioners) found that 33% of organizations cannot adequately staff cybersecurity teams, and 29% cannot afford staff with required skills. ISC2 discontinued its headline gap figure this year, shifting focus from headcount to skills. The spending consequence: Managed Security Services growing at 11.1% represents organizations buying external SOC capacity they cannot hire in-house.
Which industry spends the most on cybersecurity?
Financial services and technology firms allocate the highest percentage of revenue to cybersecurity (approximately 0.8–1.0% and 0.9%+ respectively, per Forrester 2026 Budget Planning Guide). Healthcare, despite having the highest breach costs ($7.42 million average, IBM 2025) and most complex regulatory environment, allocates the least — roughly 0.3–0.5% of revenue.
What is driving cybersecurity spending growth in 2026?
Three primary drivers: (1) AI-generated threats that lower the barrier to sophisticated phishing and social engineering at scale; (2) regulatory compulsion from NIS2, DORA, SEC cyber disclosure rules, and CIRCIA creating mandated spend floors; and (3) talent substitution — organizations using managed services and AI tooling in place of cybersecurity professionals they cannot hire at current market rates.
How is AI changing cybersecurity spending?
AI is increasing spending on both sides of the equation. Organizations using AI extensively in security saved $1.9 million per breach and cut breach lifecycles by 80 days (IBM 2025). Simultaneously, attackers used AI in 16% of IBM-studied breaches, primarily for phishing. Shadow AI — unauthorized AI tools inside organizations — was involved in 20% of breaches and added $670,000 to costs. Gartner’s 2Q26 update now tracks “securing AI” as a distinct budget category, adding $21.9 billion in new spending through 2030.
Citation Block
APA Axis Intelligence Research, & Chen, M. (2026). Cybersecurity spending statistics 2026: $248.9B market, but the U.S. is falling behind its own breach costs. Axis Intelligence. https://axis-intelligence.com/cybersecurity-spending-statistics/
MLA Axis Intelligence Research and Marcus Chen. “Cybersecurity Spending Statistics 2026: $248.9B Market, but the U.S. Is Falling Behind Its Own Breach Costs.” Axis Intelligence, 8 July 2026, https://axis-intelligence.com/cybersecurity-spending-statistics/.
Chicago Axis Intelligence Research and Marcus Chen. “Cybersecurity Spending Statistics 2026: $248.9B Market, but the U.S. Is Falling Behind Its Own Breach Costs.” Axis Intelligence, July 8, 2026. https://axis-intelligence.com/cybersecurity-spending-statistics/.