With ever more IT security threats appearing in the wild on both the wired and mobile front, analyst firm Infonetics Research noted ongoing moderately strong growth in the market for security products, especially among the market leaders.
“Looking at the top three network security vendors’ quarter-over-quarter revenue performance, Cisco increased 1.5 percent, Check Point increased 3.2 percent and Juniper increased 11.1 percent,” said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics Research, in the 3rd quarter (3Q12) Network Security Appliances and Software market share and forecast report.
“Overall the network security appliance and software market saw moderately strong growth in the third quarter and there is always potential for a great fourth quarter because of seasonal budget flush,” he added.
Mobile malware in particular is out of control in terms of growth: McAfee had fewer than 3,000 mobile malware samples in its database just a year ago, growing to around 25,000 samples today. However, that is but a fraction of the number of new terrestrial threats found this year.
As a result, global network security appliance and software revenue is up a strong 7 percent from the year-ago third quarter, Infonetics found. Integrated security appliances for instance have gained share every quarter since 4Q11, and Infonetics is forecasting continued quarterly gains through 3Q13 for that segment.
Palo Alto Networks’ successful IPO and strong financial performance have breathed life into the fairly stale integrated appliance market share picture, setting the stage for heated share battles in 2013, the firm said.
