The market is seeing growth in SaaS-based messaging security services, but vendors in the sector claim to have seen the pattern of adoption changing in recent quarters.
James Palmer, VP of SaaS Strategy at Symantec told us, “In the last six to 12 months we have seen more customers taking more service bundles and multi-protocol protection across email, web and IM services, or the whole email story from anti-virus scanning to encryption and archiving.”
Symantec confirmed that of more than 21,000 current SaaS customers across nearly 100 countries, 42% now employ four or more SaaS solutions.
The vendor is expecting its SaaS solutions to grow to 15% of overall revenue over the next five years, and intends extending its proposition across messaging security, web and instant message security onto message content continuity and archiving, Palmer explained.
Other suitable SaaS and hybrid services are planned such as hosted end-point protection for small and mid-size businesses, while existing archive services will be extended with the addition of data leakage protection features.
Larger businesses were being targeted with boundary encryption services, as a means of providing a secure tunnel to partners and customers.
In the public sector he noted that MessageLabs Policy Based Encryption service has won the UK Government’s Mark of Approval this month, a scheme intended to provide the government and businesses with certainty in their choice of security and confidence in its capabilities.
Policy-based encryption, where security controls are triggered by the inclusion of sensitive key words and customer or account numbers in message content, has been available for the last year as a SaaS offering.
Palmer said Symantec has left MessageLabs largely untouched since its acquistion, in recognition that operation of a business offering software as a service is very different from one licencing on-premise applications.
