Thanks to the economic recovery, hardware replacement programs, mobile devices, sophisticated cyber-threats and changing technology, such as cloud computing, network security spending will exceed $10 billion in five years, analysts said.
Global network and data-security spending will exceed $10
billion by 2016, according to a market forecast from ABI Research, announced on
Jan. 10.
Spending on secure routers, unified threat-management
appliances, VPNs, network-access control, firewalls and
intrusion detection/prevention systems will rise from $6 billion in 2010 and exceed $10 billion by 2016, ABI Research said.
"In 2009, we saw some dips in security spending across the
board," but the market showed "remarkable resilience" in 2010, growing 11
percent, to pass $6 billion, and "we expect steady growth in 2011," Subha Rama,
the ABI Research senior analyst who produced the report, told eWEEK.
Health care and financial services firms will increase
network-security spending by 10.8 percent and 9.8 percent,
respectively, according to the ABI analysis. While health care will see more growth,
the surge in spending for financial services was more significant because of
its larger installed base and more mature technology, Rama said. Network
security spending in health care was still an "emerging market," compared with
financial services, she said.
While the growing diversity of security threats will
continue to drive security spending, much of the growth in network and data
security will be a result of change in the way enterprises use technology, the
analysts said. More and more enterprises will adopt cloud services; business
users will access consumer cloud services, such as social networking sites, from
office equipment. In addition, there will be an explosion in the number of endpoints the
IT departments will have to start support as more employees use smartphones and
tablets in the office, ABI said. These changes in the enterprise network
escalate the risk, according to the analysts.
"Mobility has added a new dimension to enterprise network
security," said ABI Research practice director Dan Shey.
Although ABI Research's World
Enterprise Network and Data Security Markets report did not include
endpoint security in its focus, analysts couldn't ignore the fundamental implications of all the endpoints remotely connecting into the enterprise
network-on-network investment, according to Rama. Mobile devices will affect
overall network-security spending, and the most significant impact is expected
to be on intrusion detection/prevention system and VPNs, Rama said.
With the increasingly complex network, organizations need to
develop a multilevel security strategy based on various technologies, ABI said
in its forecast. Having obsolete technology or out-of-date security measures
will be one of the major threats facing enterprises, ABI said.
There has been a definite shift from point solutions to
integrated security and enterprise-wide security policy and implementations, Rama said. Vendors are offering multiple delivery models, such as software blades
and cloud-based security devices to bring down deployments costs, she said.
Small and midsized businesses will be most at risk as their
resources and budgets are typically limited, but they are subject to the same
levels of attack as larger firms, Rama said.
Higher education is still a "big, big" opportunity for
network-security spending, especially network-access control products because
of the large, transient student population, Rama said.
Increased spending is expected in all regions, with North America in the lead and followed by Western Europe, the Asia-Pacific region, and Central and
Latin America, said Rama.
Forrester Research also noted in its 2011
global IT spending forecast that enterprises will be
focusing on investing in new technology and services, instead of just
refreshing existing equipment. Forrester said companies will be more likely
to buy software, IT consulting and system-integration services.
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