A Gartner report about the security software market shows that No. 2 ranked McAfee enjoyed the most overall growth last year, Trend Micro slipped but stayed No. 3, and Symantec held onto its top spot with 19.6 per cent of the $US19.1 billion market.
Gartner's report looked at 12 market segments that included endpoint security products for both the enterprise and consumer markets; data-loss prevention; Web and e-mail security tools; user provisioning; Web access management; and security information and event management (SIEM), among others. The three "giants" of the market, as Gartner puts it, remain Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro, with 35 per cent combined market share.
Signature-based endpoint security on its way out
McAfee, which was acquired by Intel in 2011, showed the highest overall year-to-year growth, with revenues rising from $US1.22 billion to $US1.68 billion in 2012, a 37 per cent increase that Gartner says can be attributed to organic growth but also partly to accounting rules that allowed Intel a write-down. Symantec revenues rose 2.6 per cent from $US3.65 billion in 2011 to $US3.75 billion. Trend Micro, which has had traditional strength in the Japanese market, saw revenue drop from $US1.2 billion in 2011 to 1.17 billion, a 2.7 per cent decline.
The Gartner report, authored by analysts Ruggero Contu and Matthew Cheung, noted that Trend's diversification efforts into the cloud and virtualization platform security last year seem to be starting to pay off, however, and its DLP product was growing at 19 per cent.In Gartner's view, the so-called "second tier" of large vendors is said to be IBM, EMC, Cisco and CA Technologies, which compete in certain segments "though security is only a part of their overall corporate interests."
Microsoft, for instance, jumped from the No. 12 spot in 2011 to No. 10 with 2 per cent of the overall market share. Cisco, though, slipped a spot to No. 8 with security revenues falling from $US487 million to $US479 million, a 1.7 per cent drop.
In Gartner's view, there's a "third tier" composed of "specialist vendors with midsize security presence," and they include Kaspersky, Oracle, Websense, Sophos, Blue Coat Systems and Eset. The remainder is a mix of large IT vendors with "small presence in the security space" or small players specializing in one or two segments.
Gartner cited as a standout CA Technologies, which jumped a spot to No. 7, with $US509 million in 2012, up 11.3 per cent. For CA, "DLP and Web access were the fastest-growing segments, growing 24 per cent and 14 per cent, respectively, against poor-performing user provisioning, growing 4 per cent," Gartner's report said. Greatest growth for CA was seen in the geographic regions of Europe and Asia/Pacific. Kaspersky also jumped a spot in the Gartner rankings to stand at No.6, with revenues of $US628 million for 2.5 per cent growth in 2012, and 3.3 per cent overall market share.
In terms of geographic region, North America, which bought $US8.6 billion of this security software last year, provided 8.2 per cent growth overall. But other areas of the world contributed higher growth rates in buying, with Eastern Europe at 14.4 per cent, Latin America at 12.6 per cent, Eurasia at 21.8 per cent, for example.
In the overall $US19.1 billion market worldwide, Gartner said enterprise endpoint protection continues to generate positive growth, citing 6.7 per cent growth in consumer security software in 2012 for a total of $US4.89 billion in spending worldwide, and enterprise endpoint protection platforms growing 9.2 per cent to reach $US3.17 billion.
However, some of the fastest growing segments were DLP, which reached $US572.9 million last year, for 25.1 per cent growth year to year. In addition to just software, the Gartner report also sought to include appliance-based versions in some categories, including SIEM appliances and Secure Web Gateway and Secure Email Gateway appliances. SIEM software was healthy at $US976.4 million in 2012 for 27.5 percent growth, while SIEM appliances at $US384.1 million were said to grow 11.9 per cent year over year.
The overall security software market tracked by Gartner grew from $US17.7 billion in 2011 to $US19.1 billion in 2012, and no category in the security market segments tracked by Gartner showed decline.
Ellen Messmer is senior editor at Network World, an IDG publication and website, where she covers news and technology trends related to information security. Twitter: MessmerE. E-mail: emessmer@nww.com.
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