Cost of Managing Cybersecurity Will Approach $100 Billion In the Next 10 Years

The cost of managing cyber-security is expected to increase 38% over the next 10 years, reaching almost $100 billion, as companies increasingly spend on cybersecurity tools, according to a RAND Corporation study.

Worldwide spending on cybersecurity is close to $70 billion a year and growing at 10% to 15% annually. Many chief information security officers believe hackers may gain the upper hand two to five years from now, requiring stronger and more innovative defensive measures.

CIOs are not entirely certain of all the methods malicious hackers use to infiltrate systems, and businesses do not want to disclose their safety measures, according to the report.

“Despite the pessimism in the field, we found that companies are paying a lot more attention to cybersecurity than they were even five years ago,” said Martin Libicki, co-lead author of the study and senior management scientist at RAND, a research organization. “Companies that didn’t even have a chief information security officer five years ago have one now, and CEOs are more likely to listen to them. Core software is improving and new cybersecurity products continue to appear, which is likely to make a hacker’s job more difficult and more expensive.”

RAND Corporation is a nonprofit global policy think tank originally formed by Douglas Aircraft Company to offer research and analysis to the United States Armed Forces.