Gartner has released a new forecast of Australia and New Zealand's information security spending power between 2018 and 2019, hinting at what is almost double-digit growth in each country.

In New Zealand, spending on information security and services will reach NZ$550 million in 2018 – a 9% growth this year. In 2019, spending will reach NZ$604 million in 2019, an increase of 9.9%.

New Zealand organisations are also particularly interested in cloud security, as it is the smallest but fastest growing product category, bringing in approximately NZ$1 million in 2018.

In Australia, spending will reach more than AU$3.5 billion in 2018, a 6% growth rate. In 2019, spending will reach AU$3.9 billion – a 9.8% increase.

Australian organisations are focusing on spending in security services, with an excess of AU$2.15 billion spend this year.

The worldwide market is continuing its strong growth phase, with total spending forecast to reach US$114 billion – a 12.4% increase in 2018. That figure will reach $124 billion in 2019.

"Security leaders are striving to help their organisations securely use technology platforms to become more competitive and drive growth for the business," comments Gartner research director Siddharth Deshpande.

"Persisting skills shortages and regulatory changes like the EU's Global Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) are driving continued growth in the security services market."

Last year Gartner surveyed 480 respondents across Australia, India, Singapore, Canada, France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

It found that there are three key areas that are driving spending: Security risks; business needs; and industry changes.

Gartner says that privacy concerns will create 10% market demand for security services, which will impact identity and access management, identity governance and administration, and data loss prevention segments.

Gartner also believes that at least 30% of organisations consider GDPR-related consulting and implementation spending throughout the next year.

More than 40% of organisations will also invest in security services to drive their digital transformation strategies.

“Consulting and implementation service providers have retooled their service offerings over the past several years to support customers on their digital transformation journey. Security is a key factor in the uptake of that transformation process for regulated data, critical operations and intellectual property protection spanning public cloud, SaaS and the use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices,” Gartner explains.

Managed security services and subscription services (such as Security-as-a-Service) will also make up at least 50% of all security software by 2020.

"On-premises deployments are still the most popular, but cloud-delivered security is becoming the preferred delivery model for a number of technologies," concludes Deshpande.