The worldwide market revenue for security software grew almost 19% last year, showing “no noticeable impact from the recession”, according to Gartner analyst Ruggero Contu.

Revenue increased from $11.3 billion in 2007 to $13.5 billion in 2008 according to the analyst company, driven by increasing compliance demands and a rising market for appliance-based products within sectors such as email security and secure web gateways.

Symantec remained the industry’s market giant in terms of revenue share, with 22% of worldwide security software sales, despite a 2% drop on the previous year. The company earned more than twice the revenue of its closest competitor McAfee.

McAfee meanwhile recorded the strongest growth rate among major competitors, increasing its revenue by just over 20%. Despite the strong performance of major players, Gartner highlighted a wider trend of the slow erosion of the market share of many large security companies by smaller, more innovative technology-driven competitors.