Security appliance market in the Asia-Pacific excluding Japan (APEJ) increased 6% to $318.2m in factory revenues in the fourth quarter of 2010, according to IDC.
The market is expected to reach $2.8bn by 2015 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 15.6%, said IDC.
The market registered growth of 14% in 2010 and reached $1.1bn, compared to 2009. The double growth was largely driven by Firewall/VPN, Unified Threat Management (UTM), and Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) appliances.
IDC Asia-Pacific software research senior market analyst Naveen Hegde said the year 2010 started off with overall enhanced security awareness, after a number of highly publicised security breaches made the news headlines.
"This increased awareness of security threats drove firms to spend more on security appliances helped make 2010 a good year. Recent security breaches have fueled significant growth in the number of security offerings and standards in the marketplace," Hedge said.
"Organisations have to protect sensitive information and, in many cases, need to fulfill specific regulations to ensure the proper safeguarding of information. This is why many CIOs do not consider security as an overhead function but as a revenue driver. In short, they need to spend on security products for sustainability of the business."
IDC said in 2010, Cisco remained at the top in the overall security appliance market with Juniper in second place, followed by Check Point, Fortinet and TopSec.
Content management market, including Web and messaging securities, registered 48% year-on-year growth in 2010, said IDC.
The research firm said that Web 2.0 presents an information leakage challenge for the enterprises which need to deal with social media risks as well as compliance driven demands. The trend enabled the UTM market to register 16% year-on-year growth while IPS market grew 13% for the same period.
IDC also expects the growth to be strong especially in the emerging markets like India, China and the ASEAN. Security is mission critical and increases in complexity of infrastructure, making CIOs and end users in all industries trying to optimise it.
The UTM function is leading the demand curve taking a share of 39% of the total security appliance market by 2015 as against 27% in 2010.
