Software security revenue to hit $16.5 billion in 2010

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The global software security market will grow by 11.3 per cent in 2010, as businesses put more emphasis on protecting their IT.

Market revenue will exceed $16.5 million (£10.6 billion) this year, according to analyst firm Gartner. This compares to $14.8 billion (£9.5 billion) in 2009, when growth slowed to seven per cent due to the turbulent economic climate.

Security software will perform better coming out of this recession than it did from the downturn in 2001 and 2002, as market conditions are considerably different, the analyst firm said.

Improved performance in the industry in 2010 will partly stem from greater maturity, penetration and confidence in IT.

"Most segments of the security software market will continue to grow over the next few years, although a significant degree of variation is expected between the more established and less mature technologies," said Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Overall, security will remain one of the fastest growing areas within the enterprise software market.”

As for how businesses will invest in security, products delivered via the software-as-a-service model and through appliances will sell at a greater speed than those purchased with traditional software licensing, said Matthew Cheung, senior research analyst at Gartner.

“Delivery as a suite in sub-segments such as enterprise endpoint security, identity and access management, and web security will be the most prevalent product delivery types,” Cheung added.

“The growing sophistication of the threat landscape - with malware composed of multiple components that can be installed after the initial infection and the exploits of socially engineered trojans, which trick end users into downloading and executing malicious files - will push organisations and consumers to invest in endpoint security products in coming years.”

Despite Gartner's claims that companies are to invest more heavily in security, a recent survey from the Ponemon Institute showed IT pros were concerned about the level of their protection capabilities.

More than two thirds of IT workers polled said their firms did not have resources to deal with serious threats.

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