The cybersecurity-as-a-service (CSaaS) market is projected to reach $83.96 billion by 2034, growing at a 16.9% compound annual growth rate. That's according to a recent report from Polaris Market Research, and the numbers alone tell a story worth paying attention to.
Not because it's a cybersecurity story. Because it's a security story, full stop.
The line between physical and digital protection has been thinning for years. What this market projection confirms is that the organisations we protect, the clients we advise, and the environments we operate in are making a decisive shift toward outsourced, cloud-delivered security models. And that shift has direct implications for how protection teams plan, resource, and operate.
Table of Contents
What's actually driving this
The growth isn't coming from one place. It's a convergence of pressures that most security professionals already feel on the ground.
Remote and hybrid work models have expanded the digital perimeter far beyond the office walls that physical security teams are used to protecting. Cloud migration means critical data and systems live in environments that traditional security infrastructure can't reach. And the threat landscape itself has evolved: ransomware attacks are projected to hit every two seconds by 2031, while AI-enhanced malware and advanced persistent threats grow more sophisticated by the quarter.
Organisations are responding by moving from capital-heavy, in-house cybersecurity setups to subscription-based managed services. The appeal is straightforward: 24/7 expert monitoring, rapid incident response, AI-driven threat intelligence, and compliance automation, all without the overhead of building and staffing a dedicated cyber team.
Managed services led the market in 2024, which tells you where the money and the confidence is flowing.
Why physical security teams should care
This isn't just a story for CISOs and IT directors. The convergence of physical and cyber threats is already reshaping operational planning, and the CSaaS boom accelerates that.
Principals are more exposed than they think
Executive protection teams assess physical threats daily. But a principal whose organisation has outsourced its cybersecurity to a third-party provider now has a digital attack surface that extends well beyond what any advance team can see. If the CSaaS provider gets compromised, the principal's communications, travel patterns, financial data, and personal information could be exposed before anyone on the protection detail knows it happened.
Understanding who manages your client's cyber defence, and how, is becoming as essential as knowing who manages their building access.
The line between physical and digital protection has been thinning for years. What this market projection confirms is that the shift is now decisive.
Healthcare is the fastest-growing attack surface
The Polaris report identifies healthcare as the fastest-growing sector for CSaaS adoption, driven by telehealth platforms, electronic health records, and IoT medical devices. For security teams operating in healthcare environments or protecting principals with significant health data exposure, this is a red flag worth tracking.
Medical IoT devices are notoriously under-secured. A connected insulin pump, a smart hospital bed, a remote monitoring system: each one is a potential entry point. The rush to adopt CSaaS in healthcare reflects how seriously the sector is taking this, but adoption and implementation maturity are two very different things.
The outsourcing parallel is familiar
The shift from in-house cybersecurity to managed service providers mirrors a trend the physical security industry knows well: the move from proprietary security teams to contract guarding and outsourced protection. That transition brought cost efficiencies and scalability, but it also introduced new risks around quality control, accountability, and information security within the supply chain.
CSaaS providers face the same tensions. When an organisation outsources its cyber defence, it gains expertise and coverage. But it also creates a dependency on a third party's operational standards, staffing levels, and incident response protocols. Security professionals who've navigated the outsourcing conversation in physical protection will recognise the trade-offs immediately.
The client who hires a close protection team but outsources their cyber defence to an unknown managed provider has a gap in their security architecture that neither team may fully understand.
The convergence imperative
The $84 billion projection isn't just a market statistic. It's a signal that the operating environment is shifting beneath us.
Protection teams that still treat physical and cyber as separate disciplines are working with an incomplete picture. The client who hires a close protection team but outsources their cyber defence to an unknown managed provider has a gap in their security architecture that neither team may fully understand.
The professionals who thrive in this environment will be the ones who can speak both languages. Not necessarily as deep technical experts, but as security generalists who understand how a cyber breach translates into physical risk, how digital reconnaissance enables physical attacks, and how outsourced models create blind spots that adversaries are learning to exploit.
North America currently dominates the CSaaS market, with Asia-Pacific growing fastest. For teams operating internationally, this means the cyber maturity of your operating environment will vary significantly by region, and your planning should account for that.
What to do with this
Three practical takeaways:
Map your client's cyber supply chain. If you're providing protection services to an executive or organisation, find out who manages their cybersecurity. Is it in-house? Outsourced? To whom? What's the incident response protocol, and would your team be notified of a breach that could affect physical security?
Build cyber literacy into your team. You don't need to become penetration testers. But understanding the basics of cloud security, managed detection and response, and digital threat intelligence will make your threat assessments more complete and your conversations with clients more credible.
Watch the convergence points. Smart home systems, IoT devices, digital access control, GPS tracking, connected vehicles: these are the places where cyber vulnerabilities become physical security problems. The CSaaS boom means more organisations are aware of these risks. Whether they're addressing them effectively is another question entirely.
Source: Polaris Market Research, "Cybersecurity as a Service Market Size Worth USD 83.96 Billion by 2034," 2025.
This article was published by The Circuit Magazine. For weekly intelligence briefings on the security and protection industry, subscribe to On The Circuit.