Cybersecurity remains top investment for ANZ CIOs in 2025: survey

A recent Gartner survey finds that for 88% of Australian and New Zealand CIOs and technology executives cybersecurity remains the top technology investment for 2025.

This is closely followed by data analytics (84%), cloud platforms (83%) and generative AI (81%).

“With greater government regulation, coupled with some of the largest cyber attacks we’ve seen in ANZ this year, organisations face greater scrutiny as they batten down the hatches to avoid becoming the next target or breaching stewardship,” said Brian Ferreira, VP EXP Advisory Services at Gartner. “This continues to drive significant focus and investment towards cybersecurity and legal compliance into next year.”

The 2025 Gartner CIO and Technology Executive Survey gathered data from 3186 respondents, including 109 from ANZ, across the public, private and non-profit sectors.

“While not included in last year’s survey, it’s hardly surprising GenAI has shot towards the top of the technology investment list for next year as organisations continue to navigate their way towards realising the business value that GenAI can offer as the hype subsides,” Ferreira said. “They’re also facing more stringent laws to increase stewardship obligations.”

The top three technologies ANZ CIOs said they will decrease investments in next year are legacy infrastructure (43%); augmented reality, virtual reality and immersive technologies (17%); and next-generation compute technology (11%).

According to the Gartner survey, managing cybersecurity and other technology risk is the leading priority for 82% of ANZ CIOs next year. This is followed by managing technology financials (59%); demonstrating the business value of IT (52%); and innovating and modernising enterprise applications and software (51%).

“The uncertain economic climate businesses have operated in the last few years has increased executive and board scrutiny on technology investments,” Ferreira said. “Next year will be critical for ANZ CIOs to prioritise technology activities, in conjunction with executive stakeholders, by aligning technology spend and resources to validated, high-priority, smart spending levers at the enterprise level.”

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