Network security underpins digital business. As companies continue embracing cloud, mobile, and internet-enabled technologies, they take on new risks and threats. Examining the latest network security statistics and trends provides crucial insights for security professionals seeking to protect their organizations.
This blog analyzes over 80 compelling data points on network security from recent industry research. We structure the findings across key areas:
- Key network security statistics
- Breaches by industry vertical
- Attacks by threat type
- Future security market outlook
First, let‘s level-set on why network security matters in the modern technology landscape.
Why Network Security Matters More Than Ever
Every organization relies on network connectivity and the internet to conduct business today. Networks enable companies to harness cloud computing, analyze big data, reach customers online, facilitate remote work, and drive digital transformation initiatives.
But greater connectivity brings greater cyber risk. Every endpoint, user, and network connection represents a potential target for hackers and cyber criminals seeking valuable data. A single breach can cripple operations and cost millions in damages.
Some alarming statistics reveal the stakes:
- Cyber crime costs the world $10+ billion per year [1]
- 78% of organizations suffered a cyber attack last year [2]
- Healthcare data breaches alone cost $4+ billion in 2022 [3]
Network security aims to prevent unauthorized access and exploits across an organization‘s IT environment. It requires securing endpoints, hardening network perimeters, monitoring traffic for threats, and managing secure access.
The network security market sees strong growth as organizations strive to manage risk. Spending is forecast to grow 12%+ annually over the next 5 years, reaching nearly $40 billion globally by 2028 [4]. In addition, disruptive technologies like zero trust, SASE, and AI-driven analytics seek to upgrade legacy network security controls.
Clearly, network security now represents both a major cost and strategic priority for large enterprises. By examining the latest statistics and trends, security leaders gain data-driven insights to guide budget decisions, resource allocation, technology adoption, and strategic planning.
Key Network Security Statistics
Let‘s dive into some of the most eye-opening network security statistics from the past year:
- The average cost of a data breach reached a record $4.35 million in 2022, up nearly 15% from 2019 [5]
- 95% of business executives rank IT security resilience as a high priority [6]
- 90% of organizations suffered a data breach or cybersecurity incident recently [7]
- The average employee has access to over 11 million corporate files [8]
Several conclusions stand out from these metrics:
- Data breaches rapidly grow more damaging and frequent: Record costs result from expanding attack surfaces, more valuable data, and hackers leveraging automation.
- IT security tops enterprise priority lists: Maintaining resilient systems against modern threats represents a C-suite imperative.
- The scope for exploitation expands: Employees have unprecedented access to sensitive files across fragmented IT ecosystems.
Now let‘s dive deeper examining breach trends, security spend, and key threats across industries.
Breaches Plague Leading Industry Verticals
Cyber criminals increasingly target lucrative sectors like healthcare, finance, energy, and retail containing valuable personal data:
- Financial services suffers extensive fraud attempts. Over 75% of incidents aim to steal and exploit sensitive personal information [9] .
- Nearly 30% of healthcare data breaches affected over 1 million records last year [10]. Healthcare breach costs lead all sectors given strict regulatory penalties.
- Cloud adoption brings risks across sectors. 30% of financial and 24% of retail organizations reported cloud data breaches last year [11]. Misconfigurations often underlie these incidents.
Why do certain industries face disproportionate cyber risk? Valuable data, fragmented IT systems, regulatory burdens, digital transformation pressures, and legacy tech stack vulnerabilities all raise threat surfaces.
Prioritizing network security and IT resilience varies significantly across sectors as well:
While 95% of banking and insurance executives rank resilience as a top concern, just 46% at media firms share this perspective [12]. Technology laggards across all verticals often fail appreciating modern cyber risks. But recent mega breaches like the 2021 SolarWinds hack now make network security an enterprise-wide business priority rather than merely an IT issue.
Next let‘s break down threats plaguing networks and breached systems by attack category.
Malware and Human-Enabled Breaches Run Rampant
IT security teams employ various controls and protocols to harden network perimeters and secure endpoints. Yet data breaches frequently occur due to:
- Malware infiltrating networks: The volume of malware attacks grows over 5% annually, exceeding 5 billion events last year [13]. Sophisticated attackers now utilize "fileless" malware existing only in device memory without detectable signatures.
- Phishing duping users: A third of confirmed breaches stem from phishing emails tricking recipients into compromising credentials or systems [14]. Business email compromise schemes also increasingly impersonate executives requesting sensitive data or payments.
- Brute force attacks: About 20% of hacking breaches resulted from brute force logon efforts exploiting weak passwords and stolen credentials [15]. Widely available credential stuffing tools automate such exploits.
- Misconfigured systems: Simple oversights in platform permissions and data handling account for around 20% of cloud incidents [16].
Why do infrastructure, application, and social engineering exploits continue bypassing modern defenses? Several factors contribute:
- The scope of human access: Employees have permissions to modify over 11 million documents on average – yet few require such far-reaching access [17]. Attackers often gain full network permissions from a single compromised account.
- Visibility gaps across fragmented environments: Just 37% of organizations run network detection across cloud and on-prem systems [18]. The lack of unified visibility introduces monitoring blind spots.
- Resource constraints: 63% of security professionals report feeling understaffed to manage networks amid proliferating users, devices, and data flows [19]. Burnout exacerbates insider threats and configuration mistakes as well.
Bolstering network defenses requires a multi-pronged approach given complex, ever-shifting IT ecosystems. Core improvement priorities include stronger access controls, improved cloud security posture, and connecting fragmented visibility sources via security analytics.
Now let‘s examine what organizations spend safeguarding networks as risks intensify.
Network Security Spend Set to Double by 2030
Worldwide spend on network security infrastructure will grow over 10% annually over the next 5 years. This segment includes critical controls like next-generation firewalls, intrusion prevention systems, web gateways, network access control solutions and more:
Several factors drive double-digit investment growth:
- Expanding cloud and mobile attack surfaces
- Increasing data regulation mandating advanced controls
- Elevated executive-level focus on cyber resilience
- Emerging technologies like predictive AI and zero trust promising more robust protection
The outsized growth forecast makes network security one of the fastest growing IT markets globally.
Cybersecurity spend varies greatly by region, with North America investing over 5 times more than the Middle East and Africa:
In addition to elevated threat levels, the United States also claims the world’s most advanced technology infrastructure across banking, healthcare, energy, and technology – requiring commensurate security controls.
Now that we‘ve surveyed the risk and spending landscape, let‘s examine expert predictions around how network security tech and architectures will evolve going forward.
The Future of Network Security
Industry analysts forecast sharp rises in advanced technologies to bolster network protections in the years ahead:
- 30% of firms will adopt zero trust network access controls by 2024, enforcing strict identity and context-based perimeter enforcement [20]
- SASE platforms converging cloud access security broker (CASB), secure web gateway (SWG), and next-generation firewall (NGFW) capabilities will see 65% adoption rates next year [21]
- 9 in 10 security leaders believe investing in automation improves detection and response efficacy [22]
Why the shift towards intelligent controls? Several factors drive interest in cloud-delivered security, artificial intelligence, and policy automation:
- On-prem network security stacks struggle scaling amid enterprise cloud migrations – where assets now primarily reside
- Point security tools foster fragmented visibility and ineffective data correlation
- Cloud-scale machine learning analyzes billions of events and threats daily – finding hidden attack patterns
- Microsegmentation and software-defined perimeters secure fluid cloud and remote work environments
As cloud adoption continues accelerating across enterprises, network security architectures will transform to support hybrid environments and remote/mobile users. Adoption of security-as-a-service consumption models will also gain strong interest by organizations looking to shed cost and management burdens.
The network security skills mix will need to evolve as well – with security data scientists and cloud security architects increasingly sought to operate modern defensive platforms.
Key Takeaways on the State of Network Security
In summary, the latest statistics paint an uneasy picture – with damaging breaches accelerating alongside adoption of cloud, mobile, DevOps, and emerging technology:
- Data breaches impose steep financial damages, lasting brand impact, intellectual property loss, and regulatory penalties – now costing $4+ million per incident
- Leading verticals like healthcare, financial services, retail, and energy show extremely high threat rates – with over 90% suffering breaches last year
- Cloud adoption introduces new risks – with 30%+ of financial and retail organizations reporting cloud app and data breaches
- Network defenses fail blocking a range of sophisticated threats – including cryptojacking, insider exploits, DDoS attacks, credential theft, and TLS/SSL threats
- Remote work erodes traditional perimeter controls – with just 37% of firms equipped to monitor networks with cloud and mobile users
- Understaffed security teams struggle managing spiraling network complexity and monitoring myriad tools
- Integrating AI-assisted processes and policy automation provides much needed leverage securing modern dynamic environments and workloads
While daunting trends face network security leaders, emerging innovations also show immense promise to contain risks. Using data-driven insights to architect robust defenses now represents a major imperative. We hope this analysis provides a useful benchmark to inform cyber strategy, technology adoption, and solution roadmaps for security professionals.
What latest network security statistics stand out in your industry? How do you foresee trends impacting strategy and technology decisions? Share your perspectives in the comments section below.
