Cybersecurity spending hinders investment elsewhere: Gartner

73 per cent of Australian and New Zealand CIOs said cybersecurity will be their biggest technology expenditure in 2022, potentially hindering investment in other areas, says Gartner.

Gartner’s annual global CIO survey saw this figure up from 67 per cent in 2021, overtaking data analytics as the previous largest investment.

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The continued heavy investment into cybersecurity could be hindering progress in other sectors, creating a cybersecurity “tax” that directs investments away from innovation, according to Andy Rowsell-Jones, research vice president at Gartner.

"A risk-based approach is needed to make sure organisations are not spending too much," he said.

Gartner's research revealed that IT budgets in ANZ will grow at the fastest rate in more than a decade, up 3.1 per cent over all (a 2 per cent increase from 2021).

Business intelligence and data analytics as well as investments in cloud platforms and digital business transformations follow cybersecurity as the focus areas for technology investments next year.

“This increase in IT budgets means CIOs and technology executives have a greater choice of where to invest,” said Rowsell-Jones.

The increased focus and investment towards cybersecurity for organisations has driven the demand for talent, something that Bridget Gray, vice president IT services at Korn Ferry, believes we aren’t prepared for.

“We’ve never seen anything like the cyber security talent market at the moment. It is a global challenge, not just unique to Australia,” says Gray.

“Nothing prepared us for COVID and with borders shut we’ve got such a heavy reliance on international talent and that mobility of talent that we are really in quite a tricky place at the moment.”

Composability

Business composability centres around the technologies, mindset and operating capabilities that enable innovation and quick adaptability to changing business needs.

According to Rowsell-Jones, "Australian leaders tend to think of business composability as being an IT thing, instead of a mindset change across the business,” said Rowsell-Jones.

“Without big deficits to remedy elsewhere, they can afford to invest in composability, especially for developers and business architects who can design in a composable manner, as well as invest in packaged business capabilities.”

According to Gartner’s survey, just 4 per cent of Australian respondents were rated as “highly composable”, with 63 per cent of CIOs at those businesses reporting superior business performance.