Key Takeaways

  • Rising security budgets are expanding the opportunity for managed service providers across Australia and New Zealand.
  • Tool sprawl is pushing organisations toward integrated networking, identity, cloud security and Zero Trust controls.
  • Providers will still need to prove that consolidation improves visibility and operations rather than merely changing suppliers.

Australian and New Zealand organisations are spending more on cybersecurity, but the bigger shift may be how they spend it. Enterprises are increasingly looking to combine network and security functions, reduce overlapping products and move controls closer to cloud-delivered services.

That creates a sizeable opening for managed service providers. According to Gartner's 2026 forecast, Australian organisations are expected to spend A$7.555 billion on information security in 2026, an increase of 9.5% year over year. Network-security expenditure alone is projected to reach A$499 million, up 11.1%.

The growth matters, although the shape of demand is just as important as the headline total. Buyers are not simply adding firewalls or renewing isolated security products. They are examining identity security, cyber resilience, cloud-native application protection, secure access service edge, or SASE, and Zero Trust as interconnected parts of their technology estates.

Many organisations already have plenty of security products. Fastly's ANZ research found that organisations were using an average of 7.65 network and application-security solutions. At the same time, 87% of IT decision-makers expected cybersecurity investment to rise over the following year.

That combination points to a market with healthy demand and mounting consolidation pressure. More spending does not necessarily mean more individual tools. In many cases, budgets may move toward services that integrate existing controls, replace overlapping products or give internal teams a common operational view.

Separate 2025 regional research found that 90% of Australian and New Zealand respondents were integrating, or considering integrating, networking and security functions. In New Zealand, 63% of organisations were evaluating fewer security suppliers to reduce complexity, improve integration and manage operations more effectively.

Why pay for eight dashboards when operators struggle to connect the information between them? That question is becoming harder for technology leaders to avoid, particularly when cloud workloads, remote access, branch connectivity and third-party users sit outside a traditional corporate perimeter.

The architectural response increasingly involves SASE, which brings networking and security capabilities together through cloud-delivered services. Zero Trust provides a related operating model. The NIST Zero Trust Architecture, published as SP 800-207 in 2020, focuses on making access decisions based on users, devices, resources and context rather than assuming that activity inside a network boundary is trustworthy.

For MSPs, the opportunity extends beyond product resale. Customers may need help assessing application traffic, redesigning access policies, consolidating suppliers, migrating controls and operating the resulting environment. Identity integration and policy management can be particularly demanding. So can demonstrating that a new service has actually retired old infrastructure instead of adding another management layer.

Cloud adoption adds urgency. Only 48% of Australian organisations and 50% of New Zealand organisations reported achieving the cloud outcomes they expected. That gap suggests enterprises are still wrestling with cost, governance, security and operational consistency. GlobeNewswire's September 2026 New Zealand ICT market coverage also reflects the wider attention being paid to growth in the country's technology market.

Vendors including Cloudflare, Netskope and Macquarie Telecom are active across converged SASE, cloud security and network-access offerings in the region. Their presence gives customers more choice, but it also raises the bar for service differentiation. MSPs may need to show sector expertise, local support capacity and the ability to work across established customer environments.

That said, consolidation carries its own risks. Moving more controls to one platform can create migration dependencies and increase exposure to pricing or service changes. Buyers are likely to scrutinise data residency, interoperability, incident response, service-level commitments and exit options before reducing their supplier base.

The likely winners will be providers that can turn consolidation into measurable operational improvement. Fewer products is a useful starting point. Better policy consistency, clearer visibility, lower administration effort and more reliable access decisions are the outcomes customers will ultimately care about.