Simply Security - News, Views, and Opinions from Trend Micro

Posted on June 28th, 2012 in Cloud Computing, Current News by Simply Security | Be the first to comment | Tags: Internet Safety

BYOD and the cloud phenomenon will drive the IT security revolution.

The IT landscape has become increasingly complex over the past several years as companies looking to improve employee efficiency without sacrificing security begin implementing new strategies. The cloud and the use of personal smartphones and tablets to perform work-related tasks, in particular, are making the IT department’s responsibilities much more important and challenging.

Consumerization drives change in security marketplace

According to a new study by Infonetics Research, the BYOD (bring your own device) trend is having a significant impact on both traditional and endpoint security. The report noted that the combined markets generated nearly $5 billion in revenue for 2011, representing an increase of 20 percent from 2010.

“The emergence of the BYOD phenomenon has forced companies to reevaluate the types of computing devices their employees can and will use, and how they will be securely connected to corporate networks,” Infonetics Research principal security analyst Jeff Wilson said. “This will have a major impact on the growth of the traditional client security market, the mobile device security market and the relationship between the two.”

Solutions that provide increased data security for mobile gadgets saw an especially large leap in revenue in 2011, as the market for these tools expanded by 76 percent compared to 2010. This trend will continue in the coming years as more organizations adopt BYOD programs, propelling the mobile security market to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 35 percent through 2016, the study noted.

Mobile data protection isn’t the only relatively new prodigy affecting the security industry, as the cloud has also sparked significant transformations.

Cloud computing requires new approach to security

As BYOD plans continue to introduce new devices with network access to the office, decision-makers and IT departments are implementing cloud computing and managed data protection tools to keep web-connected gadgets safe from outside attacks. As a result, the global market for cloud and managed security tools generated $11.7 billion in revenue in 2011, representing an increase of 12 percent from 2010, according to a separate report by Infonetics Research.

“Companies have to worry about desktops, laptops, servers, smartphones, tablets, kiosks, iPods, set-top boxes and any other device that can connect to the Internet,” Wilson said. “The highly distributed nature of Internet-connected devices and the diversity of those devices drives many companies to look at managed services – cloud-based services in particular – to provide consistent protection regardless of device type, location, operating system or browser.”

As the BYOD phenomenon continues, the managed security market is expected to generate nearly $18 billion in revenue by 2016, Infonetics Research noted.

The trend of using managed protective solutions is driven by several factors, such as legacy protective software’s inability to handle the influx of new solutions and network-connected devices. Additionally, as more organizations migrate applications and information to hosted environments, IT departments demand data-centric security tools that follow them, the study said.

According to a study by MarketsandMarkets, the overall cloud computing market will increase at a compound annual growth rate of more than 26 percent through 2015, eventually generating more than $121 billion in revenue. As more companies adopt the technology, they will need to utilize specific tools that grant them visibility into infrastructure to ensure data is protected.

“Besides testing the cloud infrastructure for security, scalability and performance, enterprises also seek insights into the performance of applications hosted in the cloud environment,” Frost & Sullivan senior research analyst Srihari Padmanabhan said in a separate report.

As a result, Frost & Sullivan analysts believe the cloud application monitoring and infrastructure testing markets are poised to generate revenues exceeding $556 million and $320 million, respectively, by 2017.

Security News from SimplySecurity.com by Trend Micro