Gartner’s latest forecast shows end-user spending on information security in India is projected to reach $3.4 billion in 2026, up 11.7% from 2025. That figure reflects spending across network security, security services and security software, with the latter both the largest and fastest-growing segment.
Two immediate facts make the rise in spending unsurprising. First, India’s overall IT market continues to expand: Gartner also expects total IT spending in India to climb substantially in 2026, creating a larger base for security investment. Second, national incident volumes and visible attacks are rising, which pushes organisations to replace piecemeal defences with broader security programs. The Indian Computer Emergency Response Team (CERT-In) reported handling roughly 29.44 lakh cyber incidents during 2025, a scale that concentrates attention at board and ministerial levels.
“Security spending in India is set to grow in 2026 as enterprises confront increasingly sophisticated AI-driven threats and comply with more stringent regulatory requirements,” said Shailendra Upadhyay, Sr Principal at Gartner.
Security software is expected to grow fastest (Gartner forecasts roughly a 12.4% increase for 2026) as firms invest in endpoint protection, SIEM/XDR platforms, cloud security, and identity-threat detection and response (ITDR). Security services and network security also show healthy gains in the firm’s table. These shifts indicate a market moving from basic hygiene to integrated tooling and managed capabilities.
Gartner highlights two structural drivers: the rapid rise of AI-enabled attack techniques and a regulatory environment that is tightening controls around data and identity. The vendor-neutral point is straightforward — identity-based attacks (credential compromise, deep-fake-enabled fraud) are becoming a first-order risk, and regulations such as the Digital Personal Data Protection (DPDP) Act raise compliance costs for organisations that mishandle personal data. Those twin pressures are elevating identity-first security and cloud/AId security controls on executive agendas.
Regulation and policy are pushing organisations to spend as well. Indian authorities and regulators have been active: CERT-In’s growing incident response workload and advisories accompany supervisory moves in the financial sector to require stronger cyber control measures. Separately, the Reserve Bank of India has been updating its approach to digital-fraud protection and bank accountability, most recently proposing draft consumer compensation rules in response to a surge in digital fraud, a signal that regulators will demand operational safeguards and remediation processes. Those expectations nudge banks and financial firms, in particular, to invest more in detection, response and customer-protection tooling.
A few implications for buyers and policymakers
• Consolidation toward platforms and services. The money is shifting from point products to integrated platforms and managed detection/response services that address identity, cloud posture and AI-specific telemetry. Gartner’s segment numbers underscore this market preference.
• Identity as the pivot. Organisations should prioritise identity threat detection, credential hygiene and ITDR playbooks; these are the vectors most frequently flagged by analysts and incident responders.
• Regulatory risk will shape procurement. As RBI and other regulators make remediation and customer protection more prescriptive, procurement teams must bake compliance evidence, incident reporting and customer-remedy steps into security contracts.
• Skills and managed services. Given the incident volumes reported by CERT-In, many enterprises will continue to supplement internal teams with managed services and MSSPs rather than trying to hire exclusively for specialised roles.
In short, Gartner’s forecast documents an expected acceleration of investment, driven by rising incident rates, the emergence of identity-centric and AI-enabled threats, and a tougher regulatory landscape. For practitioners, the actionable takeaway is clear: treat identity-first controls and cloud/AI security as priorities, align purchases with regulatory evidence requirements, and accept that managed services will remain an important bridge while the local skills base scales up.
