Portuguese cybersecurity market worth €165 million

Portugal’s cybersecurity market is worth around €165 million, but compared to the rest of Europe is just small change.

This is according to data collected by the consultants IDC and Gatner and highlighted in the first report on the cybersecurity economy in Portugal from the National Cybersecurity Centre’s Observatory of Cybersecurity (CNCS).
Nevertheless, Portugal occupies 14th place on the Global Cybersecurity Index compiled by the International Telecommunications Union which also predicts that over the next few years the Portuguese market will show high rates of annual growth, while it currently is still within single digits (7%) according to the study by Francisco Carballo-Cruz, João Cerejeira, and Rosa-Branca Esteves at the University of Minho.
As the Rear Admiral António Gameiro Marques said at the Cybersecurity Forum (Fórum Cibersegurança), the CNCS report released on Tuesday showed that total expenditure on cybersecurity exceeded US$150Bn (€146Bn) between 2017 and 2021. Moreover, in the first year of the pandemic its total value increased by over US$133Bn (€130Bn), multiplying the amount in 2004 by 38.
The report used calculations based on information contained in the “Cybersecurity Survey into Portuguese SMEs” (promoted by CNCS in collaboration with IAPMEI (Portuguese Agency for Competitiveness and Innovation in SMEs).
“A significant part of cybersecurity problems are of an economic nature and for the majority of SMEs the barrier to putting in place measures to improve levels of cybersecurity is cost, a lack of cybersecurity culture among employees which are not suitably or adequately qualified, and a lack of knowledge on the measures that should be adopted.
“SMEs in Portugal face few security incidents and, generally speaking, are not very sophisticated”, concluded the study.