The research suggests that the Saudi Arabian cyber security market acquired the highest revenue share in the past few years owing to the growing exposure to digital communication networks and IT sector due to government initiative such as Digital Saudi plan 2030 along with rising number of people working remotely increased the need for managed security services in the country.

In H1 2020, due to the spread of Covid-19 forced the government to announce a lockdown which has created a halt in services and delay in adoption of new technologies by businesses. However, the market witnessed growth from H2 2020 on account of increasing investments in ICT sector to enhance information technology related services for instance ICT sector had increased from $30.9 Billion in 2020 to $32.1 Billion in 2021 and the sector is expected to reach $49 billion in 2026 which would generate demand for security services to protect their servers and data from cyber threats.

Rapid digital advancement fuels the market

Rapid digital advancement during the pandemic has made cyber security an important factor in risk prevention and preparedness for security challenges which has should also augment the demand for cyber security products and services over the coming years.

According to Shubham Deep, Research Analyst, 6wresearch, “On premises cyber security accounts for the largest revenue share in Middle East and Africa owing to high security concerns as it allows enterprises total control over all data and is managed and handled by their own qualified IT staff. However, the adoption of cloud-based business models to support work-from-anywhere and to improve efficiency in sectors such as banking to strengthen their tools like data encryption, logging, and auditing. IT sector would be expected to assist this transformation with new capabilities like cloud deployment in the coming years."

Swati Tomar, Research Associate, 6wresearch also comments, “Outsourcing, implementation, and hardware support services account for the dominant share in the Middle East and Africa due to high accuracy in internal and external scans across the IT network assets, it also reduces the resource need through a structured distributed deployment, thus reducing costs from IT operations. Furthermore, running a 24-hour internal cyber security team is challenging and expensive on the other hand, outsourcing cyber security services promises to be accessible all year round for real-time support and ensure organisation protection."

Key players

Major companies that are active in the Middle East and Africa cyber security market, and named within the reasearch, include, Cisco Systems Inc., Dell Technologies Inc., Kaspersky Lab, Microsoft Corporation, Fortinet Inc., Norton Lifelock Inc., IBM Corporation, Palo Alto Networks, Inc., NEC Corporation, Fireeye Inc., Trend Micro, and Eset.