Mumbai, Aug 26 (IANS): Enterprise information security spending in India is set to grow 12.4 per cent from 2018 to hit $1.86 billion this year, according to the latest forecast from Gartner.

"The growth of enterprise spending on information security in India will continue to grow unabated to reach over $2 billion in 2020," said Prateek Bhajanka, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner.

"The increased awareness on the benefits of risk assessment and the acknowledgement that security is one of the enablers of digital transformation are boosting enterprise security spending in India," Bhajanka said.

The rise in advanced cyberattacks, ransomware and malware attacks has put cybersecurity as a top investment priority for Indian security and risk management leaders (CISOs), therefore increasing spending on security locally, Bhajanka added.

In 2019, security services will represent 51.5 per cent of the total enterprise information security spending in India, according to Gartner.

Enterprise spending on Cloud security is expected to total $4 million in 2019, an increase of 300 per cent from 2018.

"The Personal Data Protection bill which is likely to be accepted by the Indian parliament in 2019 and the Indian government's initiatives like ‘Digital India' and ‘Smart City' are increasing net-new adopters of Cloud," said Rustam Malik, Principal Research Analyst at Gartner.

In 2019, integrated risk management solutions will be the second fastest growing segment, achieving a 23.1 per cent increase year over year, according to the forecast.

"Online payments rose since demonetisation in 2016 and led to an increase in investments toward IT infrastructure security," said Bhajanka.

"The move to digital business is also forcing CISOs to increase their spending on managing risks arising from cyberattacks and non-compliance," Bhajanka said.