More than three quarters of IT service providers in North America and the United Kingdom and Ireland intend to add new cybersecurity services in the coming year. That is according to research by industry association GTIA. AI plays a part in providers’ growth plans and in their customers’ priorities.
The Global Technology Industry Association (GTIA) presented the first findings of its Channel Trends in Cybersecurity research at ChannelCon EMEA, taking place in London on 9 and 10 November. The research maps the views of IT service providers across the organisation’s three global regions: North America, EMEA and APAC. The figures released so far cover North America and the United Kingdom and Ireland. Results for the Benelux, DACH, ASEAN and ANZ will follow later this year, as will the full report.
North America: AI services on the rise
In North America, 76 per cent of respondents plan to add new cybersecurity solutions in the next twelve months, compared with 65 per cent in 2025. The biggest increases are in identity and access management, data protection and privacy, and AI-related cybersecurity solutions. Almost 60 per cent want to add AI-related security solutions to their portfolio. According to GTIA, the opportunities here are not purely technological. The research cites AI governance, the security of models and data, and acceptable-use policies as areas in which providers can develop new services.Half of respondents report that cybersecurity contributed directly to revenue growth this year. That growth came mainly from identity, security management and cloud and data solutions.
UK and Ireland: concerns over generative AI growing
In the United Kingdom and Ireland, 47 per cent of respondents name the use of generative AI by cybercriminals as their biggest security concern, up from 37 per cent in 2025. In this region, 78 per cent of providers want to add new cybersecurity services in the coming year. AI-related services and data protection and privacy remain the leading categories. The proportion planning to add cloud security services rose from 33 to 47 per cent.Over the next twelve months, 46 per cent expect data privacy and compliance to deliver the strongest revenue growth, followed by cybersecurity consultancy and risk assessments (43 per cent) and agentic AI and other AI-related security services (42 per cent).
Protective measures not yet widely rolled out
GTIA also published the Q3 2026 Quarterly Cybersecurity Tracker, a separate survey of 309 IT service providers in North America. It shows that 93 per cent offer cybersecurity as a core or supplementary service. Yet for each of the six security measures tracked, fewer than half of providers report having deployed it at more than half of their customers. For example, 42 per cent apply multi-factor authentication to all critical systems at more than half of their customers. For immutable, air-gapped backups, the figure is 35 per cent.According to 51 per cent of providers, AI-generated attacks are among their customers’ biggest concerns. Attackers’ growing use of AI is also the reason customers most often give for spending more on cybersecurity; 45 per cent of providers hear that argument. Three quarters of providers say customers are willing to pay more as cybersecurity costs rise, unchanged from the second quarter. A lack of budget commitment is the main form of customer resistance for 35 per cent, compared with 40 per cent a quarter earlier.In addition, 87 per cent say they have won a customer because they offer cybersecurity services. At the same time, 21 per cent lost a customer over the past year as a result of a security incident.
From concern to action plan
Carolyn April, Vice President of Research and Market Intelligence at GTIA, says concerns about AI give providers an opening to help customers make practical security decisions. According to April, this means drawing up rules for AI use, protecting the data on which AI runs and determining where existing measures need to go further. Providers, she says, can turn that concern into a concrete action plan.
The full report is available via the Q3 2026 Quarterly Cybersecurity Tracker.
This article was originally published in Dutch on MSP Business. Read the original →
