In spite of the widespread belief that bringing data on the systems to an external service provider would create doubts on security, Gartner believes that the market for cloud security is among those set to grow more in recent years.
According to Gartner report, the market for cloud-based security will hit $ 2.1 billion global value this year and will rise to 3.1 billion in 2015. Among the security services in the cloud most popular, Gartner cites the e-mail security, web security services and identity and access management (IAM) will grow over the years. In the 2013-2014 period, the highest growth will be in systems based on encryption and security token, security information and event management (SIEM) tools, systems vulnerability assessments and firewalls for Web-based applications.
While SIEM and IAM sees the growth, functions such as encryption are likely to become more and more popular in the future. However, issues of trust and regional variations mean that suppliers will have to carefully consider every opportunity to market before deciding on which one to target.
Overall transition to SaaS based applications, and other cloud-based services is pushing organizations to adopt cloud-based security controls. They are implemented either as a standalone function, or in the SaaS-integrated package. Managed security services (MSS) also accelerate the adoption of cloud-based security services to organizations. MSS Delivery models, in turn, are influenced by the demand for cloud services security, enabling security providers become the de facto MSS players.
Gartner expects that the adoption of security-as-a-cloud-based services, and the extent of its use will continue to grow as the organization gain more experience with SaaS and technology, initially focused on the consumer market that is gradually penetrating the corporate environment as a result of BYOD trends.
Cloud security services segment is expected to grow faster than the market of remote security monitoring equipment installed at the customer site. In the next two years, the major suppliers of network and IT services will be offered to the new security-as-a-service, giving specific management tools for cloud-based IT resources with an eye to the original customers of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Gartner expects that small suppliers, aimed only at the MSS, will be most affected by the introduction of these services, and among them will accelerate consolidation.
The greatest interest is noticeable to the means of encryption in the cloud security intermediaries because of their relative ease of deployment and management of encryption capabilities on the part of the customer itself. Gartner expects cloud hosting providers and suppliers of IaaS show a greater interest in the potential of cloud encryption.
However, Gartner cautions that taking into account the different levels of maturity, cultural acceptance and a local variation of the IT infrastructure, there are significant regional differences in the rates of adoption of cloud-based security systems. The maturity of a particular business community, local regulatory requirements and cultural aspects – all play a role in the level of expenditure allocated to this delivery model as compared with the locally embedded solutions. Privacy issues are a significant factor hindering the implementation of all forms of cloud-based services. This is especially true in countries and regions with rigid regulatory requirements, such as Europe, with its data protection laws.