Yankee identifies leaders in global security market

With about one month left in the year, The Yankee Group projects that revenue generated by the global security market will reach $12.9 billion. The biggest winners this year will be Cisco Systems, Symantec and VeriSign.

After performing a supply-side analysis of publicly available information, interviewing security vendors, and interacting with enterprise security officers, The Yankee Group divided the market into three multi-category components: threat mitigation, command and control and managed services.

Threat mitigation represents 42% of the market at $5.4 billion. It consists of layered defenses against the risk of business disruption caused by incidents such as worms and viruses, denial-of-service attacks, intrusions and buffer overflows. The segments within this component include: perimeter firewalls, network integrity systems, application gateways and system integrity software.

Command and control segments that include identity management, security event management, vulnerability assessments and patching, and intrusion detection audits will run a close second and account for $5.2 billion, or 40% of the market.

Managed security services will represent 18% of the global security market at $2.3 billion. This component which uses external expertise in operating and improving the performance of security processes, includes augmenting in-house operational staff, enhancing security response, reducing operational expenses and improving security processes and strategies.

Yankee Group rated Symantec the most trusted security vendor for both products and services in 2004, according to surveys, which cited its leadership in desktop software, and in fighting threats at all layers of an integrated defense.

VeriSign, leading in digital identities services that drive secure communications on the Internet, has been growing its position in global managed services business and will be challenged with finding new high-growth markets for digital identities, the report said.

The report said that market leaders should be on the lookout for Microsoft, which has dramatically improved its security capabilities, and for many privately held companies such as Arbor Networks, Sana Security, Determina, Skybox Security, Imperva, Teros, Qualys, IronPort, NetSec, Perfigo, TruSecure and Sourcefire. The report also said that security is best delivered as a network service and as best-of-breed security features become commoditized, they will move to the network to improve scalability and lower the cost of ownership.