Published on the 18/08/2009 | Written by Newsdesk

Despite the economic downturn, Gartner says security spending rose 27.5% last year…

The security software market in Australia grew 27.5% to reach revenues of $248.6 million during 2008, according to IT research firm Gartner.

The wider Asia Pacific security market grew 28.3% last year, down from 36% in 2007 and Gartner says despite the slower growth rate, the results show that the security market has not suffered a significant impact from the economic downturn.

Australia is the second-largest market for security software in Asia Pacific, following China.

“This growth is remarkable considering in the fourth quarter of 2008, global economies began to feel the impact of the credit crunch and the global economic downturn,” said Matthew Cheung, senior research analyst, Gartner.

“Double digit growth in a challenging economic climate confirms that security remains a key priority for Asia Pacific CIOs and IT security leaders.”

Data security and privacy, along with the need to protect IT infrastructure from the ever increasing rise in sophisticated and targeted attacks in Asia Pacific, were among the key drivers fuelling the growth of IT security software spending.

For organizations operating in mature markets such as Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, compliance was a major driver.

The secure Web gateway (SWG), security information event management (SIEM) and e-mail security market segments demonstrated the highest growth at 48%, 31.1% and 29.4% respectively.

Consumer security and enterprise endpoint protection remained the two largest sub-segments of the Asia Pacific security market in 2008, totalling US$1.08 billion.

The top five vendors – Symantec, Trend Micro, McAfee, EMC and IBM – held nearly half of the market at 47.8%.

The combined top five vendors’ market share is gradually falling in favour of smaller players, a sign that security remains a dynamic market where smaller players, new entrants and specialist vendors rise to become an effective challenge to the established leaders.

Symantec continued to be the market leader, accounting for 22% of security software revenue in Asia Pacific in 2008. However, the company’s market share was down from 2007 when it accounted for 22.8% of the market.

McAfee experienced the strongest growth rate among the top five vendors, as its revenue increased 30.1% in 2008.

Purchasing attitudes point to an increase in popularity in security products delivered as software as a service (SaaS) or as an appliance, particularly for certain technologies such as e-mail security and SWG.

Estimates for 2009 predict that security will produce good growth levels, although the full impact of the global economic recession will result in a decrease in spending and the fall of growth rates to around half the levels achieved in 2008.