Gartner predicts that information security and risk management services spending will grow 11.3% to reach $188.3 billion globally next year and the drivers are the shift to hybrid work, zero-trust network access (ZTNA), and cloud-based delivery models.

The analysis firm also forecasts cloud security service spending to have the strongest growth over the next two years among the categories it analyzes. Organizations expect to splurge around $5.3 billion on the category in 2022 with an increase of 26.8% year over year to $6.7 billion in 2023, according to Gartner’s recent research.

For network security equipment, the spending in 2021 was around $17.5 billion in 2021 while the number is forecasted to reach $20.9 billion next year. In the identity access management category, the expense is anticipated to go up to $20.7 billion in 2023, a 15.1% increase year over year.

The largest spending category in the research is security services which include consulting, hardware support, implementation, and outsourced services. Organizations worldwide paid about $71 billion for the category and Gartner expects the spending to reach $76.5 billion in 2023.

“The modern CISO needs to focus on an expanding attack surface created by digital transformation initiatives such as cloud adoption, IT/OT-IoT convergence, remote working, and third-party infrastructure integration,” Ruggero Contu, senior director analyst at Gartner, said in a statement. “Demand for technologies and services such as cloud security, application security, ZTNA, and threat intelligence has been rising to tackle new vulnerabilities and risks arising from this exposure,” he said.

Gartner identified ZTNA as the fastest-growing segment in network security in the research with a 36% growth in 2022 and 31% in 2023.

The firm explained the trend is driven by the increased demand for zero-trust security for the remote workforce and reducing dependence on VPNs for secure access. And organizations also started to use ZTNA for employees in the office as they are more familiar with the technology.

This finding is in line with the results of Zscaler’s latest VPN Risk Report. The security vendor found nearly 70% of the surveyed companies stated they are accelerating their zero-trust projects, while 78% expected their future workforce will be hybrid, which indicates a long-term need for this strategy. The report also found that 44% of the respondents witnessed an increase in exploits targeting their business VPNs last year.

Gartner projects at least 70% of new remote access deployments will be served predominantly by ZTNA, a significant increase from less than 10% by the end of last year.