“The World In 2030,” a Bank of America research paper, cites Cybersecurity Ventures, whose analysis showed that cybercrime — such as hacking, fake videos, and stealing personal data — was expected to cost the world $10.5 trillion by 2025, making it the world’s third largest economy behind the U.S. and China. And with the exponential rise of AI deep fake videos and phone calls, these crimes will become more effective and harder to stop.

Part of the reason why those losses are so high, according to Adam Evans, Royal Bank of Canada’s SVP and CISO, is that businesses too often underestimate the risks, and too often under-invest in protecting themselves.

GOBankingRates, a Gen Digital media property, reports that the rise in online threats will cause both businesses and governments to spend much more on cybersecurity (especially in the U.S.).

This includes areas like banking, defense, and infrastructure, and it could increase profits for security companies and open the door to online security innovation.

“Cybersecurity is the only line item that theoretically has no spending limit,” says Morgan. “There is a budget before a company suffers a cyberattack or a series of them, and then there’s the actual spend that takes place afterwards. What business or consumer isn’t going to do and spend whatever it takes to recover from being hacked?”

While all other tech sectors are driven by reducing inefficiencies and increasing productivity, cybersecurity spending is driven by cybercrime, as reported in the 2026 Cybersecurity Market Report published by Cybercrime Magazine in partnership with Evolution Equity Partners.

In 2015, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan declared that the nation’s second-largest lender had an unlimited cybersecurity budget. “Moynihan was brutally honest,” says Morgan. “But really, what he said then is true now and in the future for Fortune 500 and Global 2000 enterprises all the way down to Main Street businesses. He just had the courage to say it without worrying about the repercussions.”

The bottom line, according to GOBankingRates: Online risks will drag down growth unless security spending keeps up, but cybersecurity itself could end up becoming its own business sector.

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