Australia 2nd to China in APAC security software market E-mail by Peter Dinham

The Asia Pacific security market grew at a solid rate of 28.3 percent in 2008 – albeit it, down from 36 percent in 2007 - with Australia becoming the second-largest market for security software in the region after China.

In its latest report on the security software market, Gartner says that despite a slower growth rate, the security market did not suffer a significant impact from the economic downturn, with Australia showing above-average growth of 27.5 percent to reach revenues of A$248.6 million, to be the second-largest market for security software in Asia Pacific, following China.

Gartner senior research analyst, Matthew Cheung said this growth was remarkable considering in the fourth quarter of 2008, global economies began to feel the impact of the credit crunch and the global economic downturn.

“Double digit growth in a challenging economic climate confirms that security remains a key priority for Asia Pacific CIOs and IT security leaders.”

According to Gartner, data security and privacy, along with the need to protect IT infrastructure from the “ever increasing rise in sophisticated and targeted attacks in Asia Pacific”, were among the key drivers fueling the growth of IT security software spending, and for organisations operating in mature markets such as Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, compliance was a major driver.

Cheung said the secure Web gateway (SWG), security information event management (SIEM) and e-mail security market segments demonstrated the highest growth at 48 percent, 31.1 percent and 29.4 percent, respectively.

Consumer security and enterprise endpoint protection remained the two largest sub-segments of the Asia Pacific security market in 2008, totaling US$1.08 billion, according to Cheung.

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