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Why the numbers appear to conflict
IANS Research and Artico Search surveyed 587 CISOs in April 2025 and found average security-budget growth of 4%, down from 8% in 2024. More than half of respondents reported flat or shrinking budgets. Steve Martano, IANS Faculty and Partner at Artico Search, said, “Once again, we find that security budgets are not immune to macro conditions.” IANS Senior Research Director Nick Kakolowski added, “Security is being treated like any other business unit — its budget is largely a reflection of the macro environment and organizational goals.”
Gartner’s measure is different. It forecast worldwide end-user information-security spending of $213 billion in 2025, up from $193 billion in 2024, and $240 billion in 2026. Those are global market estimates and forecasts across many categories, not the budget of every company and not a report of realized spending by each organization. Gartner analyst Ruggero Contu summarized the situation: “Established security spending will continue as normal, but some organizations are being more cautious with any new security spending in this highly uncertain and challenging climate.”
Both observations can be true at once: a few large buyers, new regulatory requirements and expanding technology markets can lift the global total while smaller organizations, public bodies or businesses under pressure cut or freeze their own allocations.
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Threats are expanding in ways a simple attack count misses
The World Economic Forum’s Global Cybersecurity Outlook 2026 found that 87% of respondents considered AI-related vulnerabilities the fastest-growing cyber risk over 2025. AI can help defenders detect patterns and respond faster, but it can also increase attackers’ speed, targeting and ability to scale fraud or exploitation. It is an enabler on both sides, not an automatic saving.
The same report identifies cyber-enabled fraud and phishing, third-party and supply-chain exposure, skills shortages and geopolitical conditions as material pressures. In its survey, 12% of North American organizations and 13% of Latin American and Caribbean organizations said geopolitical volatility had led them to cut cyber budgets. Those are regional survey findings, not universal rates.
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Resilience remains uneven: 64% of organizations said they met minimum cyber-resilience requirements, while 19% said their resilience exceeded requirements. The figures describe respondents’ assessments, not an independently audited pass rate.
A defensible way to allocate a smaller budget
1. Start with what must keep operating
List business-critical services, sensitive information, legal or regulatory duties and credible scenarios that could interrupt them. A payment system, clinical record platform or manufacturing process may warrant different safeguards even when two organizations have similar revenue.
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Document identity protections, backups, endpoint and network controls, cloud configurations, logging, supplier access and incident procedures. Remove overlap and close foundational gaps first. Official baseline guidance such as CISA’s Cross-Sector Cybersecurity Performance Goals can provide a starting point, but use the current CISA publication directly for detailed requirements.
3. Compare the full cost, not the subscription price
| Decision factor | Question to answer |
|---|---|
| Total cost of ownership | What will licensing, implementation, renewal, training and exit cost over its useful life? |
| Risk reduction | Which specific threat scenario becomes less likely or less damaging? |
| Staffing and operations | Who will configure, monitor, tune, investigate and maintain the control? |
| Integration | Will it work with existing identity, cloud, data and recovery systems? |
| Coverage | Does it address the organization’s actual cloud, data, identity and third-party exposures? |
| Evidence and recovery | Can you test its effectiveness, incident response and restoration performance? |
| Portability | Can data, configurations and processes be moved if the supplier fails or prices rise? |
4. Treat people and skills as capacity
IANS and Artico reported that security-staffing growth slowed to 7%, and only 11% of surveyed CISOs considered themselves adequately staffed. A tool that cannot be monitored or acted upon may add a recurring bill without adding equivalent protection. Budget for training, realistic on-call coverage, specialist help or a managed service where those needs are material.
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5. Consolidate selectively
Fewer suppliers can reduce administration, integration work and duplicated features. It can also create concentration risk, weaken specialist coverage or make an outage more damaging. BCG reported extensive consolidation among its surveyed CISOs, but that finding does not establish consolidation as the right answer for every organization.
6. Set evidence gates for new spending
Before approving a purchase, define what success will look like: broader control coverage, shorter detection or response time, lower exposure, tested recovery or a documented reduction in a priority risk. Reassess against those measures after deployment. Avoid promising a generic return on investment; the value depends on the organization’s assets, threat scenarios and response capability.
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Separate categories from priorities
Software, professional services and network security describe types of spending. Cloud security, data protection and threat intelligence describe priorities. They are not interchangeable. A cloud-security product may be software, a consultant or a managed service; the budget decision should compare the outcome and operating burden rather than treat the labels as equivalent.
BCG reported that cyber spending grew 12% in 2025, above its expected 7%, and that more than half of its surveyed CISOs planned increased spending in cloud, data and threat intelligence. Those results indicate where some organizations are allocating money, not a universal shopping list. Match any priority to the systems and risks you actually have.
What a constrained organization can do next
- Build a one-page risk register: name the critical service, likely threat, business impact, current control and remaining gap.
- Rank gaps by consequence and feasibility: include implementation time, staffing, integration and recovery requirements.
- Fund the highest-leverage basics: prioritize controls that protect identities, critical data, reliable backups, supplier access and incident response when those are your leading exposures.
- Run a recovery and response exercise: record how long detection, decision-making and restoration actually take.
- Review quarterly: change priorities when systems, suppliers, regulations or threat conditions change, rather than purchasing reactively after an incident.
The practical conclusion
You do not solve a shrinking budget by treating every new threat as a reason to buy another product. Reconcile the pressure by using organization-specific risk evidence, counting staff time and operating effort as real costs, and requiring measurable improvements from each significant investment. Global spending may be growing, but disciplined prioritization is what protects an individual organization when its allocation is not.
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