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Demand ramps up for all-in-one security solutions

The complexity of managing security technologies is the third-highest challenge organizations will face over the next year, according to IDC.

New research from the analyst firm predicted this complexity will lead to growing demand for integrated solutions, thus forcing secure content management (SCM) vendors to shift from a single type of protection toward a focus on broad protection from a wide range of emerging threats to enterprise security.

IDC believes organizations will increasingly look for security solutions that integrate anti-virus, anti-spyware, intrusion prevention and firewall into a single solution that offers centrally managed consoles for alerts and updates, aggregated logs and common policy engines. IDC expects this trend to continue through 2010.

The analyst noted that the SCM market is rapidly converging with the threat management (TM) market across all layers of network security.

"The SCM market is quickly evolving from standalone products to one featuring more comprehensive security solutions," said Brian Burke, research manager for IDC's Security Products program. "SCM vendors are moving away from a focus on a single type of protection, such as antivirus, toward a focus on brand protection from a wide range of emerging threats to enterprise security."

According to the new IDC study, "Worldwide Secure Content Management 2006-1010 Forecast: The Rise and Fall of SMC," organizations are now buying comprehensive messaging security solutions that address multiple threats and deliver integrated anti-virus, anti-spam, and content-filtering into a single solution at the access layer.

At the gateway layer, unified threat management (UTM) appliances are another area where SCM products, such as anti-virus, are quickly becoming a feature. Organizations are deploying UTM appliances to combine network firewalling, network intrusion detection and prevention, and gateway antivirus in a single solution.

At the endpoint, IDC observes that the problem of coordinating and managing multiple client security technologies across the enterprise is driving the convergence of antivirus, antispyware, personal firewall and host intrusion prevention into a comprehensive endpoint security solution.

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