Security software market grew by 18.6 percent in 2008

Secure market

Market researcher Gartner has reported a healthy increase in revenue for the global security software market in 2008 of 18.6 percent, to $13.5 billion.

"In 2008, the security market did not show any noticeable impact from the economic downturn," said Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner. "A double-digit growth in a challenging economic climate shows that security remains a key priority for CIOs and IT security leaders."

It looks like businesses were the main drivers of this growth, with appliance-based products specialising in things like e-mail security - such as those made by SonicWALL - experiencing conspicuous growth. Compliance (presumably data security) was also a major driver in North America and Western Europe.

Among the vendors, Symantec remains number one by some distance, but it is having its dominance eroded by the smaller players. Unsurprisingly, it looks like everyone managed to increase their market share last year, but vendors outside the top five now make up the majority of the market, taking over two percent of market share from Symantec alone.

Table 1
Worldwide: Security Software Vendor Revenue, 2008 (Millions of US Dollars)

All software segment types, including appliances
Source: Gartner (June 2009)