2026 ETR Research Series
State of Security
Technology leaders aren't pulling back. They're getting sharper about where they invest.
ETR's third annual State of Security Study captures how over 500 security-specific technology leaders are rebalancing budgets, priorities, and vendor strategies as GenAI and agentic AI move from experimentation to enterprise reality. The market's most important shifts are already underway:
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For the first time, LLM/GenAI protection has surpassed cloud security as the #1 budget priority. 59% of organizations plan to increase spending in 2026, up from 50% the year prior.
- Vendor sprawl is easing with only 35% of respondents expected to increase the number of vendors in their stack – which is down from 40% in our 2025 survey – as teams look to stabilize their stack and focus on outcomes.
This is what's actually driving security investment in 2026. Not analyst opinion. Not speculation. Direct input from the technology leaders making the decisions, with 80% holding C-Suite or Director-level roles across large enterprises and SMBs worldwide.
The hardest problems now live inside the tools organizations already approved and deployed. The vendors pulling ahead are being evaluated on entirely new criteria. And the governance models for agentic AI are still wide open.
Download the Findings Summary — Free →
Go Deeper With the Full Findings
The downloadable State of Security Findings Summary gives you the themes and key highlights. To go beyond the summary, schedule a working session with an ETR team member to review the full dataset, key charts, and what the shifts mean for your 2026 security roadmap, including:
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Where security budgets are growing and why disciplined investment is replacing big jumps
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Identity, AI-focused security, and the fastest-moving categories in the market
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Agentic AI rollout: adoption pace, governance gaps, and the biggest identity risks
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Data leakage in the AI era, inside sanctioned tools, not just shadow AI
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