Businesses worldwide are gearing up to spend more on cybersecurity, with plans to increase IT security budgets by up to 9% over the next two years, according to cybersecurity company Kaspersky.

Kaspersky’s latest IT Security Economics report shows that large companies are setting aside a median of $5.7 million for cybersecurity, while Small and Medium Businesses (SMBs), “invested $0.2M in IT security from a median IT budget of $1.6M.” 

Kaspersky says that the reason for this continued investment is due to financial losses from cyber incidents. In regions like the Middle East, Turkey, and Africa, companies reported an average of 13 cyber incidents in just one year, showing how widespread the issue is. 

According to Kaspersky, “large enterprises experienced an average of 12 incidents this year, spending $6.2M to recover from them — 1.1 times higher than the budget allocated for IT security overall,” while SMBs “experienced an average of 16 incidents this year, while spending $0.3M for remediation, which is 1.5 times higher than their overall IT Security budget,” Kaspersky says adding that “SMBs are the most disproportionately affected group in terms of budgetary impact.” 

For large enterprises, despite having resources to handle such cyberattacks, Kaspersky notes that “the time required to fully respond and mitigate these threats can span for hours, underscoring the challenge of managing widespread, complex IT environments.”

But for SMBs, Kaspersky says they “often lack robust cybersecurity policies and procedures, which leaves them vulnerable to incidents involving employees, public cloud misconfigurations, and high-level permissions,” making them the most disproportionately affected group.

“This data illustrates the continuation of the current trend of increasing cybersecurity spending across all market segments,” according to Veniamin Levtsov, Kaspersky’s Vice President for Corporate Business Expertise.

“This growth,” Levtsov says, “is driven by at least three key factors. Firstly, and obviously, the constant growth in the complexity of cybersecurity threats forces companies to adopt more advanced solutions to enhance the detection of attack traces and automate responses. Secondly, increasing concerns from governments regarding digital sovereignty leads to the emergence of new regulations and regulatory requirements and, as a result, increased expenses. The third factor influencing the growth of cybersecurity budgets and costs is the constant increase in salary expectations for professionals in various cybersecurity fields.”

Kaspersky advises companies to not only invest in cybersecurity solutions but also in training their employees to recognise and respond to threats.