IDC Expects the Ever Increasing Security Threats and Regulatory Compliance to Drive the APEJ Security Software Market Growth in 2011
SINGAPORE and HONG KONG - As most economic figures point to a smooth recovery, the outlook for the IT security industry in the Asia/Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) region is expected to be optimistic in 2011. According to the figures recently released in IDC's Asia/Pacific Semiannual Security Software Tracker report, most security software markets in APEJ are expected to post strong double-digit growth in 2011. However, organizations are not inherently safe in the IT world.
A press release by IDC stated that the growth of the security software market is fuelled by the increasingly sophisticated threats and management overheads each organization and user face. The overwhelming personal and confidential information interact and collaborate each other through web applications also exacerbates security threats in terms of information leakage.
"The security landscape has been constantly seeing new threats growing exponentially in terms of complexity. The malicious attacks included exploiting the vulnerabilities of applications and operating systems, insider sabotages and purloining, identity fraud and unauthorized access to corporate systems and networks. The ways of committing these misdeeds are ever changing," said Research Analyst for IDC Asia/Pacific Security Research Marco Lam.
Regulatory compliance requirement is also a significant driver for security software. Companies are required to align with international regulations, standards and best practices when collaborating with business partners around the world. Robust and thoughtful policy is vital to the organization. Therefore, many of these companies have turned to the Security and Vulnerability Management (SVM) products to help them establish a security management framework for various compliance requirements such as policy compliance, log archiving and auditing.
As a result, IDC expects the SVM market to achieve the highest growth among the APEJ Security Software markets and it is expected to grow by 13% to US$141.78 million in 2011. While the Secure Content and Threat Management (SCTM) market is expected to achieve a 10.5% growth with revenue forecast to reach US$1.2 billion in 2011 compared to 2010. The Identity and Access Management (IAM) market is estimated to grow by 12.5% to reach US$ 371.5 million in the same time period.
Looking forward, IDC predicts cloud computing technology to be a long-term development direction for controlling management overheads in the security software market. Automation and centralized management are the two major engines driving the security-as-a-service market in this track. A centralized security software can provide a real time protection to information flows with broad user coverage as it just requires one single point for automated patches and definition updates. Meanwhile, more dedicated security software is emerging to protect virtual environment.
More data privacy ordinances are going to be issued or have been issued in a number of Asia/Pacific countries. This will induce the adoption of security facility capabilities among organizations and IT users in regions. Even the less security conscious user and organization in the past will be encouraged and educated to understand the benefits and implement more security software to protect their data and rights. The IAM and SVM segment are the two areas with the most significant growth across Asia/Pacific as companies turn to SVM's capabilities - such as patch management, policy enforcement and security incident analysis and management - to reduce complexity and increase management efficiency while IT organizations use such software to better monitor their security posture and generate holistic reports for auditing purposes.
Remote access is also becoming common practice in many organizations, with IAM emerging as one of the principles to protect corporate information from unauthorized remote access, especially when mobile functionality becomes more pervasive in the business world. The astonishing growth of social media usage is a hidden burden to IT resources allocation within a company. Proper identity access management can help the organization to stay on top and manage this emerging dynamic.
Moving forward, IDC expects companies to continue to leverage new security technologies such as policy and IT compliance suites, vulnerability assessment and risk management products, and SaaS to increase management efficiency. Thus, the overall security software market will continue to experience healthy growth," Marco concluded.
