Cybersecurity in its many forms – safeguarding IT networks and data, establishing governance and policies, negotiating acquisition – continues to act as a major force behind a huge slice of the U.S. economy, the federal government. And of that slice, the Defense Department remains a major player.
According to new data from Deltek, cybersecurity is a top IT priority for industry and government technology professionals surveyed as part of Deltek’s annual IT Market Forecast. In the survey, 92 percent of government respondents and 87 percent of industry respondents identified cybersecurity as a top priority. Those figures nearly doubled the next-closest priority, cloud computing, which 52 percent of industry participants and 38 percent of government participants prioritized.
Although it’s a key area of emphasis for both government and industry, cybersecurity’s complexity is a critical factor across a swath of policy areas, the research showed. In technology policy, directives address areas such as governance, cyber operations and risk management strategies, many of which are driven by high-profile security breaches such as the recent attack on the Office of Personnel Management.
Cyber also heavily affects acquisition policy and contracting, whether it’s delineating cyber-specific procurements such as continuous diagnostics and mitigation tools, or integrating cyber elements into major procurement vehicles and government-wide acquisition contracts, such as Aliant 2, Deltek researchers noted.
Cyber additionally is driving changes in organizational structures and policies, including in the Defense Department, where the services are launching new, cyber-specific elements to operate in the digital domain. Capitol Hill has been slower to act, Deltek notes, although the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act did recently pass in Congress.
Federal information security addressable market spending is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of more than 5 percent through 2020, from $7.8 billion in fiscal 2015 to $10 billion in 2020, according to Deltek.
“Unlike other areas of discretionary spending, cybersecurity continues to be somewhat immune to budget cuts for the time being, although this we see this trend softening in the out years of the period as agencies achieve many of their planned upgrades, efficiencies and [return on investment] on their spending,” Deltek researchers noted in information provided to C4ISR & Networks.
Of that information security market, the defense sector is expected to grow by 5.3 percent CAGR through 2020, versus 5.7 percent CAGR in the civilian government sector and 4.7 percent CAGR in the intelligence sector.
“Historically, growth in defense information security has tended to outpace growth on the civilian side and this may continue from the top-line, total spend perspective,” Deltek researchers wrote. “However, the DoD tends to have a higher percentage of information security personnel that are uniformed service personnel and government employees compared to civilian agencies, which lowers the proportional addressability by contractors. The growth of uniformed ‘cyber warriors’ combined with overall and IT budgetary pressures is keeping addressable growth in check more so than in the past.”
