In This Article
A measurable market, not a mood
Saudi Arabia’s National Cybersecurity Authority published a 2025 indicators report drawing on a study of the Kingdom’s cybersecurity sector. Its 2025 indicators report puts the market at SAR 15.2 billion in 2024, up 14 percent on the previous year, covering all public and private spending on security products and services.
The same report estimates the sector’s contribution to GDP at about SAR 18.5 billion in 2024, roughly 0.40 percent of the economy, and counts more than 21,000 cybersecurity professionals, with women making up 32 percent of that workforce – above the global average the report cites.
A separate MENA forecast
A separate April 2025 Gartner forecast for Middle East and North Africa enterprises projects information security spending of about $3.3 billion across MENA in 2025, up 14 percent on 2024, with security software the largest category at nearly $1.5 billion.
The fastest-growing segment in Gartner’s forecast is security services, projected to grow 16.6 percent. Its analysts attribute that to skills shortages: organisations that cannot hire enough specialists for threat hunting and security operations are buying managed detection and response services instead.
Why the spending keeps rising
Gartner’s analysts name three drivers: the push for cyber resilience, regulatory compliance, and the need to secure rapid digital transformation. The Saudi report adds a structural detail: spending splits almost evenly between products (SAR 7.7 billion) and services (SAR 7.5 billion), with network security, endpoint security, security operations, consulting and data security the most in demand.
Public sector demand matters too. In Saudi Arabia the public sector accounted for SAR 4.8 billion, about a third of the market, a measure of spending by public entities, not proof of the cause of every increase in demand.
What this means for employers
The NCA release documents 9 percent workforce growth in 2024. It does not establish that demand grew faster than the workforce in every Saudi sector. Gartner separately discusses specialist skills shortages as one driver of managed-services demand in its forecast. The two sources use different coverage and methods; their monetary totals should not be combined or treated as directly comparable.
For boards, the sources provide dated measures and forecasts, not an estimate of what a particular company should spend. Budgets should be planned against the organisation’s own risk assessment and regulatory obligations – and those obligations differ by country and sector, so the current rules of the relevant regulator are the reference point.
Sources and scope
This is editorial analysis of cited public material. Figures describe the specific source, market and period stated; they are not projections for individual companies.
