Wealth Outlook 2024 - Slow then grow

58 Wealth Outlook 2024 | Opportunistic 300 Internal investment Investment with external vendors Total Spending ($ bn) Our top 10 high conviction potential opportunities 2. Cybersecurity shares With geopolitical risk already heightened, the world will see heightened manipulation of news, data and images as critical 2024 elections get underway across the US, Europe, India and elsewhere (see Geopolitics and elections , page 24 ). Hacks and attempts to infiltrate the devices and files of political candidates have been a key tool for opposition research and malicious actors to add chaos to these democratic rituals. The continued growth of AI will bring with it ever-more sophisticated tools to be weaponized for pattern recognition and decryption. Thankfully, these technologies are also available for the “good guys,” with AI being deployed to improve cyber threat detection and prevention. Citi Research’s survey of Chief Technology Officers³ ³ Citi CIO Survey: IT budgets further stabilize with uptick in transformation projects, October 13, 2023 at large US firms continues to indicate that spending on cybersecurity remains a top item in information technology budgets ( FIGURE 3 ). When choosing the right solution for combating cyber threats, companies increasingly choose to contract with outside vendors to substantially augment in-house capabilities. The FIGURE 3 Firm spending on cybersecurity is growing rapidly 150 0 2012 2014 2016 2018 2020 2022 2024 2026 Source: Haver Analytics as of November 15, 2023. All forecasts are expressions of opinion and are subject to change without notice and are not intended to be a guarantee of future events.