In their quarterly Cybersecurity Market Report, Cybersecurity Ventures reported the financial industry will spend $9.5 billion on security in 2015, making it the largest non-government market.
It is also the fastest growing non-government market, with a cumulative spend over the next five years expected to exceed $77 billion.
According to the report, financial services firms have ramped up spending in response to several high-profile cyber-attacks. After hackers exposed the contact information of 76 million households and 7 million small businesses, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon said his company expects to double their $250 million annual security budget by 2020.
Citigroup’s annual cybersecurity budget reportedly exceeds $300 million, and Wells Fargo spends about $250 million to guard against hackers.
It isn’t just financial services firms worried about cybersecurity. The worldwide market for cybersecurity was $71 billion in 2014 and is expected to be at least $155 billion by 2019. Cybersecurity Ventures said there were 42.8 million attacks detected across all industries in 2014.
However, money won't solve the problem. At the Investment Adviser Association's compliance conference in March, David Glockner, the director of the Securities and Exchange Commission's Chicago regional office, said firms often have a false sense of security because they spend big money on tools they don't understand.
