Research from Canalys’ Cybersecurity Analysis shows the market for cybersecurity solutions for public cloud and ‘as a service’ collectively grew 46% in Q1.
The analysis found that these deployment models accounted for 17.6% of the total cybersecurity market in the first quarter, up from 13.8% from the same quarter the year before. Virtual security appliances and agent solutions also grew strongly too, up 18.2% on an annual basis.
Although established hardware and software deployments account for nearly 75% of the market, their growth rate is just 8%.
Canalys says this underlines the transition many organisations are making for cybersecurity as they seek to safeguard data assets and workloads hosted in the public cloud.
Just how important cybersecurity is and what happens when things go wrong was underlined in a big way this week when Cloudflare, which provides computing and web security services to businesses around the globe, made millions of websites inaccessible for about 17 hours.
Security market immune
Canalys says the worldwide cybersecurity market reached US$9.7 billion in terms of shipments in the latest quarter, up 14.2% from US$8.5 billion in Q1 2018.
“Investment in cybersecurity shows no sign of slowing down as it remains a priority for all organisations. The security industry will be immune to the increasingly challenging macro-economic and political environment,” said Canalys’ Principal Analyst Matthew Ball.
He added, “Recent high-profile ransomware attacks have resulted in organisations paying large sums to regain access to critical IT systems and data.
“Strengthening security strategies across devices, infrastructure, perimeters and applications will continue to be critical.
“Increasing employee training and gaining more comprehensive cybersecurity insurance will also be important to counter these threats.”
Top five
The top five cybersecurity market leaders in Q1 2019 were Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Symantec, Check Point and Fortinet, which collectively accounted for 34% of the total. Cisco extended its lead in network security, though Palo Alto Networks and Fortinet continued to grow faster as all three took share.
McAfee, Symantec and Trend Micro remained the market leaders in endpoint security, but competition is increasing, with Crowdstrike, Carbon Black and Cylance making most gains.
Symantec was the leader in web and email security. In terms of the newer deployment models, Trend Micro stands out for simplifying its licensing to enable customers to buy across different types.