There’s more good news for cloud providers coming out of Gartner, with the latest forecasts predicting the cloud-based security market will be worth $9bn in 2020.

In 2017 the market is expected to hit $5.9bn, a rise of 21% from 2016.

The big trend appearing is that overall growth in the cloud-based security services market is above that of the total information security market.

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The top three cloud priorities for businesses are email security, web security, and access management (IAM), with Gartner noting that mainstream services which address these priorities, along with SIEM and IAM, offer the most significant growth potential. Threat intelligence enablement, cloud-based malware sandboxes, cloud-based data encryption, endpoint protection management, threat intelligence and web application firewalls are the fastest growing segments.

Much of the growth is being driven by small and midsized businesses as they become more aware of the threat posed to them by hackers, malware, ransomware and so on.

Ruggero Contu, research director at Gartner, said: “The cloud medium is a natural fit for the needs of SMBs. Its ease of deployment and management, pay-as-you-consume pricing and simplified features make this delivery model attractive for organisations that lack staffing resources.”

The rise of cloud-based security services is one that Gartner says presents both opportunities and challenges for providers.

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“On the one hand, new greenfield demand arising from emerging requirements from SMBs is driving growth. On the other hand, new competitive dynamics and alternative pricing practices threaten traditional business models,” said Contu.

This means that providers will have to shift from an on-premises model to a cloud-delivery based business model, which as we have seen from the likes of SAP, and Oracle, is not an easy task.

“Overall, one of the main focus areas for providers relates to the shift from owning and selling a product, to selling and supporting ongoing service delivery.”