87% of ANZ CIOs to increase cybersecurity investment in 2024: Gartner

Gartner reports that 87 per cent of Australian and New Zealand CIOs and technology executives will “receive their largest increase in cybersecurity technology investment in 2024.”

That would compare with 62 percent in 2023, and 80 percent of CIOs globally.

The 2024 Gartner CIO and Technology Executive Survey gathered data from 2,457 respondents in 84 countries, including 87 in ANZ public, private and non-profit sectors.

“While a significant amount of focus has been directed towards generative AI (GenAI) this year, cybersecurity remains at the top of the investment list again given the highly publicised data breaches we’ve seen across ANZ over the past 12 months,” Gartner distinguished VP analyst Andy Rowsell-Jones said.

“Every organisation’s risk and audit committee are worrying about a potential cybersecurity fallout and most industry regulators are actively pushing for improved competence.”

A total of 79 per cent of ANZ CIOs polled for Gartner expected to direct the largest amount of new or additional funding in 2024 towards cloud platforms, followed by data analytics (78 per cent).

AI and machine learning was ranked sixth (62 per cent), with investments directed towards increasing operational efficiency and bridging IT talent gaps.

"This will change, however, once organisations move past the proof-of-concept stage, particularly for GenAI,” Rowsell-Jones said.

“Currently only a small number of organisations are edging towards production with their GenAI trials – deployment is when the real investment starts.”

ANZ CIOs said the top three technologies that will decrease investments in next year are legacy infrastructure and data centre technologies (50 per cent), ERP and next-generation compute technology (both 10 per cent) and application modernisation (nine per cent).

“While it’s surprising to see that investments in application modernisation will decrease next year, it’s unlikely that it has run its course,” Rowsell-Jones said.

“More likely, it has just been deprioritised in the face of other more pressing issues for ANZ CIOs.”