The security software market in Western Europe was worth about $2 billion in 2002, says IDC, and will increase by 15% in 2003, rising to $4.5 billion in 2007.
Spending on secure content management systems, including antivirus, messaging and web filtering software, grew by 34%, in 2002. IDC expects this segment to be worth more than $2 billion
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in 2007. “The evolution of threat with new hybrid attacks exploiting multiple vulnerabilities of an organisation’s infrastructure continues to drive the secure content management market,” says Carla Arend, research analyst with IDC’s European security products and strategies service. “However, Europe needs to wake up to the fact that, while essential, antivirus and firewalling alone won’t get the job done.”
Another area that is showing high growth is the authorisation, authentication and administration (3A) market. IDC forecasts a compound annual growth rate of 14% until 2007.
Six vendors won more than 40% of the Western Europe security software market revenue in 2002: Symantec, Network Associates, Check Point, Computer Associates, IBM and Trend Micro.
“It takes only one unsecured machine on a network to create potential risk for everyone else,” says Richard Hunter, vice president and Gartner Fellow. “The risks and the costs of defences are high, and the trend is moving both upward.” The main areas of vulnerability, according to Gartner, are: fundamentally insecure commercial software; an inadequate patch update model; and misguided users who believe crime happens to “someone else”. Moreover, several new technologies – web services, unsecured wireless LANs and instant messaging – are making systems even more vulnerable.
