Every cloud has a silver lining so they say, and for IT contractors that cloud could come in the form of data security issues and the software necessary to solve them.
Last year revenue from worldwide security software jumped by 7.5% to £10.8 billion, according to industry analyst Gartner. As SMEs continue to demand enhanced security, criminals manage to come up with more advanced ways of hacking into systems.
Roggero Contu, the research director at Gartner, said the increased growth reflects the continued demand for enterprise and consumer security tools.
Growth in Eurasia and the Asia Pacific region reached double figures but demand in Western Europe lagged behind due to continuing economic uncertainties. However, despite restrictions on IT budgets, the market for security software is still resilient.
Symantec led the market again last year with a 17% annual growth rate. McAfee took a 6.9% share of security market, followed by Trend micro with 6.8% and IBM with 5.3%.
Mr Contu went on to say that the security software market is rapidly evolving when it comes to new technologies and new ways of delivering the models. Security-as-a-service is becoming increasingly popular, especially with new start-ups.
Furthermore, the key market players expanded their product portfolios last year and acquired firms that helped them expand into emerging markets. For the last five years, merger and acquisition activity has also been important when it comes to shaping the market landscape, he added.
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