Report

UAE Cybersecurity Market Analysis

The UAE cybersecurity market is expected to grow from USD 0.82 billion in 2025 to USD 0.91 billion in 2026 and is forecast to reach USD 1.51 billion by 2031 at 10.65% CAGR over 2026-2031. This steady expansion underscores the federation's decision to embed security spending inside every flagship digital programme, from sovereign-cloud migration to critical-infrastructure automation. Heightened government oversight, proven by the National Cybersecurity Strategy's rolling compliance audits, has transformed what was once ad-hoc procurement into predictable, multi-year budget allocations. Demand is further amplified by simultaneous roll-outs of smart-city utilities, AI-enabled public services and industry-specific digital twins, all of which enlarge the attack surface and oblige adoption of zero-trust architectures and real-time threat analytics. Vendor competition has intensified in response, producing shorter innovation cycles, localised Arabic-language threat-intelligence feeds and turnkey managed-service offerings aimed at closing persistent skills gaps. In parallel, the private sector's pivot toward outcome-based contracts-where risk-reduction metrics outweigh hardware counts-signals a maturing purchasing culture that should stabilise average selling prices even as volumes rise.

UAE Cybersecurity Market Trends and Insights



Mandatory IAS and National Cybersecurity Strategy Enforcement

Federal Information Assurance Standards mandate risk assessments, layered controls and incident-response testing across critical infrastructure. Continuous audits by the National Electronic Security Authority have normalised compliance spending, leading organisations to lock-in multi-year contracts covering governance tooling, security analytics and workforce certification programmes. Vendors that automate evidence collection and policy mapping observe shorter sales cycles, as buyers seek to streamline reporting obligations. This regulatory rigidity also lowers payment-default risk, making the UAE cybersecurity market attractive to global suppliers establishing regional delivery centres .

Smart-City and Federal Digital Projects Widen Attack Surface

Dubai's Smart City framework and Abu Dhabi's 200-plus AI government services weld IoT sensors, 5G backbones and data lakes into platforms that require continuous monitoring. For example, DEWA's AED 7 billion smart-grid ties electricity and water networks to real-time automation, creating new OT entry points that adversaries can exploit. Consequently, demand spikes for micro-segmentation, AI-driven network analytics and encrypted machine-to-machine communications. Integrators report that initial budgets often rise by 12-15% once security scoping is finalised, revealing a hidden uplift that propels overall UAE cybersecurity market growth .

Emirati Cyber-Talent Shortage Inflating Costs

Fortinet's 2024 skills-gap survey shows 58% of UAE organisations struggle to fill security roles, driving monthly salaries for senior analysts above AED 67,000. Cost inflation leads enterprises to outsource monitoring or deploy AI-assisted response to stretch limited headcount. While initiatives such as Dubai's Cyber Node aim to train new talent, output lags demand, elongating project timelines and creating temporary reliance on expatriate contractors, thereby raising longer-term operational costs.

Other drivers and restraints analyzed in the detailed report include:

OT-Security Spend Surge in Oil and Gas (ADNOC, ENOC)Sovereign Public-Cloud Roll-outs Stimulating Cloud-Native Security UptakeMulti-Cloud Integration and Vendor Lock-in Concerns

For complete list of drivers and restraints, kindly check the Table Of Contents.

Segment Analysis

Solutions continue to command 70.25% UAE cybersecurity market share in 2025 as legacy endpoint, gateway and encryption tools remain indispensable for baseline defence. However, managed and professional services are projected to log a 14.25% CAGR, outpacing overall UAE cybersecurity market growth as enterprises confront talent shortages and regulatory complexity. Advisory demand soars for privacy-impact assessment, zero-trust strategy and red-team simulation, while managed detection and response contracts increasingly include outcome-based clauses tied to mean-time-to-detect benchmarks. Parallel growth in pay-as-you-grow subscription models ensures SMEs participate, reinforcing services' upward trajectory.

Cloud-security, data-loss prevention and identity-governance software remain the most requested solutions, energised by sovereign-cloud mandates and Law 45/2021 privacy requirements. Hardware continues to sell into OT environments, yet vendors accelerate pivot toward virtualised appliances complemented by AI analytics that consume telemetry from distributed edges. The resulting hybrid stacks blur boundaries between product and service, prompting suppliers to bundle licenses with continuous-support packages for predictive revenue.

On-premise deployments held 57.45% of UAE cybersecurity market size in 2025 due to entrenched infrastructure in energy, defense and certain financial cores. Yet cloud-based controls are forecast to advance at a 14.60% CAGR, reflecting federal edicts that new public-sector workloads must reside on sovereign clouds. Enterprises increasingly adopt cloud-access security brokers, workload-protection platforms and SaaS email-gateways to align with zero-trust frameworks. Data-residency concerns have not impeded migration because domestic data-centre expansion provides local landing zones for sensitive workloads.

Chief information security officers negotiate bandwidth, compute allotments and native key-management in their cloud contracts, proving cybersecurity is now inseparable from broader cloud economics discussions. Suppliers offering pre-built integration kits for Khazna, AWS Middle East and Microsoft Azure UAE regions shorten time-to-value, winning tender differentials.

The UAE Cybersecurity Market Report is Segmented by Offering (Solutions [Application Security, Cloud Security, and More], Services [Professional Services, and More]), Deployment Mode (Cloud, On-Premise), End-User Industry (BFSI, Healthcare, IT and Telecom, Industrial and Defense, Retail and E-Commerce, and More), End-User Enterprise Size (Large Enterprises, Smes). The Market Forecasts are Provided in Terms of Value (USD).

List of Companies Covered in this Report:

IBM Corporation Cisco Systems, Inc. Juniper Networks Oracle Corporation Palo Alto Networks, Inc. Fortinet, Inc. Microsoft Corporatiom Trend Micro Incroporated Dell Technologies Rapid7 Injazat DarkMatter Help AG (e& Enterprise) Kaspersky Check Point Software CrowdStrike Sophos Huawei Technologies Splunk Mandiant (Google Cloud)

Additional Benefits:

The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
3 months of analyst support