Pinpointing the growth opportunities for consulting firms: a spotlight on cybersecurity

The polycrisis of the last three years has had many consequences. It’s challenged basic assumptions around business (what we mean by globalisation; whether efficiency is the right priority). It’s thrown clients into disarray as they struggle to prioritise in the face of competing investment. It’s made professional services firms doubt their ability to grow, focusing their attention inwards and leading to an endless carousel of leadership changes.

Our forecasts suggest that annual growth rates will improve in the next 2-3 years to around 6%, as the economic environment normalises. But that headline figure is still lower than the pre-pandemic norm of roughly 8%. And it also masks the central problem in the consulting and professional services market.

There are a small number of very big opportunities for growth, primarily around cybersecurity and AI. The sheer potential of these opportunities means that no major consulting and professional services firm that’s seeking to grow can ignore them. Like a firestorm, these opportunities suck out the oxygen of firms’ attention from the rest of the market. They can, ironically, distract firms from thinking about the other client needs that are driving demand. They encourage firms to play by the same rules, rather than finding new ones that will leverage their competitive strengths.

The distribution of the 212 capabilities (sub-services) Source tracks in our model of the global consulting and professional services industry

Data source: Market Trends sector survey 2026 

Over the next few weeks, we’re going to examine different growth opportunities from the client perspective, focusing our attention on four key questions:

• What are the pressures—positive and negative—that will force clients to take action and invest?
• To what extent do client organisations have the internal capability and capacity required to achieve their strategic objectives alongside their day-to-day activities?
• Technology will inevitably play an important part in delivery, but what role does it need to play?
• How much are organisations prepared to pay for the external support they need?

The four fundamental drivers of growth in demand for consulting and professional services 

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We’re going to begin at the top, with a market that is already worth northwards of $100bn a year…

Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity has been the most consistently high-growth area of professional services for the last decade, delivering double-digit growth even through a challenging market. Growth this year is forecast to be around 15%, at least twice the rate of the overall market. The challenge—and opportunity—here will be how to keep the momentum of such an enormous market going.

Looking at how our four fundamental drivers of growth play out where cybersecurity is concerned:

There is no shortage of external pressure. Cybersecurity is the best current example of what we’ve termed a “blockbuster” service. It’s an issue everyone sees as important, not just senior executives—and every time a corporation announces it’s been hacked, we’re reminded of this. The impact of investing in cybersecurity is more immediate and tangible than developing a new strategy, for example. Cybersecurity initiatives are huge, as evidenced by the scale of this market. But most importantly, relentless innovation by hackers means that organisations are under constant pressure to upgrade their security and to respond immediately to any potential threat—as the banking industry’s fears around Mythos demonstrate. In the cyber war, no one can afford to relax and the money to do essential work must always be found.

Increasing use of technology, especially AI, creates new opportunities for cyberattacks. Nine out of 10 technology executives expect their spending on technology to grow in the next 1-2 years, largely because this will help their organisations become more resilient and productive and will help provide access to better data and information. Three quarters of technology executives think that their organisation needs to update its technology as soon as possible if it’s to be a viable business.

But the picture around pricing is more complex. In theory, clients tell us, there is no limit on the amount of money they’ll spend on cybersecurity. But the reality is more complex: Asked about their attitudes to future price rises for cyber-related services, 87% of finance executives and 84% of risk professionals expect prices to rise. Meanwhile, just 70% of IT executives do, even though these are the people we might expect to be most willing to pay more. Asked why they think prices will rise, two thirds of IT executives say that prices are generally rising—in other words, price increases are coming from suppliers. This perception is roughly twice as high in the technology function as it is in other parts of the organisation. Risk executives, for instance, are more likely to think that price rises will be driven by high levels of demand—in effect, by the market, not by suppliers. This data hints at the key issue in this market, which is…

People. Cyber skills remain very important to organisations, but not quite as important as they were 12 months ago. Last year, clients found it harder to recruit cyber expertise than any other skills, but this year risk, revenue generating, AI, and supply chain skills are all seen to be more difficult to find.

These small details point to a potential problem. Demand for consulting and professional services depends on clients recognising that they don’t have the skills they need. And in this respect, demand for cybersecurity support runs the risk of being a victim of its own success. Precisely because client needs, externally and internally, are unrelenting and because cyber-related skills can be expensive, it appears to make economic sense for clients to invest in building up their own, in-house teams. Why pay for expensive outside help, when you can do the work using existing resources?

We can see evidence of this question being asked when we look at the services clients are most—and least—likely to buy. The chart below shows the percentage of clients who say that they’re most likely to buy a given service (the top row of positive numbers) versus the proportion who say that they’re least likely to buy this same service (the bottom row of negative numbers). The data is sorted, right to left, based on the difference between the positive and the negative figures. When clients identify areas where they’re not going to be relying on outside help, it doesn’t mean they’re not investing in this space, but that they might be using in-house resources to do the work.

Cybersecurity used to sit firmly towards the left-hand side of this chart, and the proportion of clients saying this is the area they’re most likely to buy services in was much higher. Last year, cyber was ranked fifth out of the 18 services we asked about. This year, it’s 11th. This suggests that clients are looking to build up long-term, internal resources in this space, more so than in other areas.

Data source: Market Trends sector survey 2026 

The opportunity of cybersecurity is obvious: Continuous growth in demand, driven by a combination of external factors and high levels of technology investment internally. But the rate of future growth will depend on how clients balance the trade-offs between external support (expensive but cutting edge?) and internal resources (cheaper, but less up to date?). The challenge, therefore, is for consulting and professional services firms to make the depth and breadth of their cyber expertise extremely clear. Clients can be optimistic about their ability to recruit specialist skills—and the best way to counter that will be to show just how high the recruitment bar is. Ironically, the future of this most technology-focused service lies not in technology, but in people.

What should firms do next?

We equip leading consulting firms with market sizing data and growth forecasts from our MegaModel—the largest model of the professional services market out there—helping our clients spot trends, anticipate disruption, and make informed long-term decisions. To find out how we can pinpoint the opportunities in your addressable market, get in touch.