Growing fears of hacking, malware and virus infections have increased sales of security appliances and software, rising four percent to $1 billion in the first half of this year, according to new figures.
The latest Network Security Appliances and Software study from Infonetics Research also expected worldwide security appliance and software sales to grow by 23 percent to $1.3 billion by the middle of 2006. Annual sales revenue is projected to grow to $6.4 billion by 2008.
But it appears that while vendors integrate more security features into appliances, some functionality is being deliberately left out of the equation.
"Some vendors are starting to build integrated content security appliances (virus scanning, spam filtering, spyware/malware security, etc.) and are intentionally leaving out VPN and firewall functionality, so these products can act as a supplement to existing embedded VPN/firewall products," said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst at Infonetics Research.
According to the report, front-runner Cisco has 34 percent of worldwide sales in the network security appliance and software market, while Check Point comes second with 10 percent and third place Juniper Networks racks up eight per cent.
The research found that VPN/firewall appliances and software make up 78 percent of total revenues, intrusion detection/prevention 14 percent, and gateway antivirus eight percent.
