Compliance and mobility govern security

Megha Banduni examines the trends in the security market, and predicts a bright future for integrated security devices

The one segment in IT that has seen tremendous growth over the past few years is security. Despite advances in technology, security threats are growing at an alarming rate. The Indian network security market experienced a healthy growth in 2005 reaching about $116 million, up 70 percent compared to last year, says business consulting firm Frost & Sullivan.

Analysts predict that the security market will see some fundamental changes such as convergence, growth of managed secure services, and compliance-driven initiatives, which will put identity and access management in focus.

According to Frost & Sullivan, the network security market (integrated security appliances, standalone appliances, software firewall/VPN and secure content management solutions) will shrink in 2006 due to the bundling of anti-virus, anti-spyware and firewall products. Also, managed security services are expected to grow 39 percent from 2005. Increased managed services will reduce the market size as the service providers can obtain larger discounts for a higher number of end-point licences.

The Indian security market is undergoing a paradigm shift evolving from the product to the service model. According to industry estimates, the security services market has grown by 74 percent to reach Rs 157 crore. Contrast this with the Rs 203 crore security products market that has grown by 35 percent during 2004-05. The security industry is poised for the kind of growth witnessed in IT during the nineties.

Rajendra Dhavale, Consulting Director, CA India and SAARC, feels that the Indian security software market is poised for a healthy growth of 36 percent in the coming years—from Rs 105 crore in 2003 to Rs 481 crore by 2008. He further believes that the 3 As of security (Administration, Authori-sation and Authentication) software would pose the highest growth of 42 percent, moving up from Rs 24 crore to Rs 137 crore during the period.

Similarly, the firewall and VPN market grew by 44.6 percent in Q2 2005 to tot up revenues of $10.8 million as compared to $7.7 million in Q1 and $5.3 million in Q2 2004. VPN drew in $9.2 million in Q2 2005 up from $5.3 million in Q1 2004. The revenue earned by IDS/IDP and Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS) in Q2 2005 is $3.6 million compared to $1.8 million in Q2 2004.

Anil Menon, CEO, SecureSynergy, estimates the market for security in India to be in the range of $90 million for the current financial year. Explosive growth of VPNs (especially SSL VPNs with end-point security) and other forms of WAN connectivity as well as wireless networks have reduced the importance of perimeter firewalls and increased the importance of proactive response and process/people controls. Vulnerability scanning, and identity and settings management, are areas of significant growth. The growth of the market is driven due to the maturity of systems and applications that organisations have invested in. Kartik Shahani, Sales Director, McAfee India and SAARC, is of the view that after all the infrastructure investments have been made by most large organisations in core banking, expanded networks for telecom and backbones, investments are considered in security and storage.

Financial year 2004-05 saw a significant increase in the number of security threats. For years, organisations accepted that security is important, but restricted themselves to firewalls to prevent undesirable traffic from entering the network, and anti-virus software to protect against malicious code. This year the trend is towards integrated security appliances.

Compliance driving security adoption

"Protecting intellectual property has become more relevant than ever before. This also explains the burgeoning market for content security" -Niraj Kaushik Country Manager Trend Micro India and SAARC

There has been increasing awareness of identity and access management (IAM) in the security segment. Dhavale states, “IDC expects the IAM market to increase to $4 billion by 2009.” According to a recent survey by Ernst & Young, nearly two-thirds of the survey respondents cited compliance with regulations such as Sarbanes-Oxley, Clause 49 or their equivalent as the primary driver of information security.

The need for higher availability coupled with compliance with regulations will put IAM solutions in the mainstream in 2006. This trend shows that organisations are becoming more aware of security breaches that can happen from within the company. With increasing use of electronic means for conducting business, they are taking security threats seriously and responding by implementing the necessary procedures and tools, says Dhavale.

Niraj Kaushik, Country Manager, Trend Micro India and SAARC, sees a clear paradigm shift in corporate attitudes towards security, and that shift is governed by the following factors: “First, virus threats have moved away from the desktop to the server and gateway levels. Second, the need to protect an organisation’s intellectual property and critical data has become more relevant than ever before. This also explains the burgeoning market for ‘content security’.” Besides, as Indian companies access the Internet and rely more and more on the Net to do business, security awareness is expected to improve.

Upcoming trends

Kalpit Jain, Business Head, Netcore, believes that the twin trends of commoditisation and centralisation will dominate both products and implementations, especially in the e-mail security area, over the next 2-4 years. While there will always be holdouts, especially in smaller businesses and IT- centric organisations, most enterprises looking for reliable and secure e-mail will find themselves with an appliance-based e-mail firewall (or an Internet-based service) handling anti-virus, anti-spam, denial-of-service, and some regulatory and policy controls.

Sumeet Sabharwal, Senior Vice-president for NaviSite’s Global Delivery Operations, says that one significant trend that has been observed in the recent past has been the emergence of integrated security appliances that combine the capability of firewall, VPN, IDS, anti-virus and anti-spam.

Security convergence

"By using a management console, administrators can manage local and remote appliances over the Internet including advanced configurations" -Unmesh Deshmukh Country Sales Manager Enterprise Security, Symantec

Shubhomony Biswas, Country Manager, India, SonicWall says, “In the second quarter of 2005, the IDS/IDP/IPS market experienced 47.4 percent growth compared to the previous quarter due to the adoption of IDP/IPS solutions. The revenue earned by IDS/IDP/IPS in Q2 2005 is $3.6 million compared to $1.8 million in Q2 2004.”

Implementing intrusion detection gives potential intruders no place to hide. Nevertheless, it cannot replace a firewall or an anti-virus program as it must be used in conjunction with the two. When all three security technologies are integrated, they provide a triangle of security which is a synergistic barrier around the computer and network, says Unmesh Deshmukh, Country Sales Manager of Enterprise Security, Symantec.

Today’s organisations are not satisfied with point solutions. They want a single device for an end-to-end security solution. Several core security functions like firewall, VPN, gateway anti-virus, IPS, spam prevention and URL filtering are bundled in an easy-to-use appliance to provide protection against blended Internet attacks.

Digvijay Singh Chudasama, VP Sales, Cyberoam, believes that IDS and IPS have given way to IDPs—intrusion, detection and prevention. With the emergence of the Sober worm, IDPs have made their entry into the enterprise segment, and also in SMBs. In particular, they have become a critical part of a Unified Threat Management (UTM) solution.

"Viruses are expected to become more complex and also faster such that an attack is often faster than the time taken to download the latest patch" -Parag Arora Business Development Manager Cisco Systems, India & SAARC

According to IDC, the UTM segment is the fastest-growing in the security appliance market globally. IDC believes that by 2008, UTM security systems will be the biggest chunk of the $3.45 billion combined firewall/VPN and UTM market—outpacing traditional standalone firewall/VPNs with a 58 percent share, says Parag Arora, Business Development Manager, Cisco Systems, India & SAARC.

Chudasama is of the view that UTMs are here to stay, especially among the SMBs. They can neither afford the large capex involved in purchase of multiple solutions nor do they have the manpower and capacity to handle high operational expenditure involved in multiple solutions with multiple updates, AMCs and vendors.

An integrated appliance also provides the customer with an ideal way to reduce the total cost of ownership and complexity by eliminating the need to deploy and manage multiple security products manufactured by different vendors. The integrated security functions can be managed from a single management console included with the appliance. “By using this management console, administrators can manage local and remote appliances over the Internet including advanced configurations, rule sets and cluster parameters,” says Deshmukh.

According to Jain, UTM is the next step to Managed Security Services (MSS). In fact, a few MSS companies have already started offering services under the concept of UTM. The UTM concept projects a promising business model as it provides one window for all security issues.

Managing security services

According to research firm Gartner, MSS is one of the fastest-growing segments in the security marketplace. It delivers real-time threat analysis, helping organisations establish compliance, minimise business impact and reduce overall security risk at an acceptable cost in the face of emerging threats.

When it comes to MSS, organisations are finding third-party outsourcing viable because it allows them to concentrate on their core competency. A surprising trend in the adoption of MSS is that SMBs are more open to the idea compared to large enterprises. Some of the prominent vendors in this field are Reliance, Trend Micro and Symantec. Security providers have a range of offerings such as managed IDS, vulnerability assessment and anti-virus prevention.

The reasons for MSS’ popularity are many: it delivers real-time threat analysis, helps organisations establish compliance, minimises business impact, and reduces overall security risk at an acceptable cost in the face of emerging threats.

Key security threats

Though there has been an improvement in security applications and products, the number of virus and spam attacks continue unabated. Malicious code, phishing, wireless security threats, VoIP threats, bot networks, adware and spyware are some of the threats that continue in 2006.

Today, almost 65 percent of corporate e-mail traffic is spam. The anti-virus market in India is estimated to be over Rs 130 crore. According to industry experts, organisations are spending almost Rs 1,000 to Rs 1,200 per user to curb spam.

The problem has reached such serious proportions that organisations with more than 500 users can actually see the effect on their overall growth rate.

According to Deshmukh, “Attackers are moving away from large, multipurpose attacks on network perimeters and towards smaller, more focussed attacks on desktop computers. The new threat landscape is likely be dominated by emerging threats such as bot networks, customisable modular malicious code, and targeted attacks on Web applications and Web browsers.”

Arora believes that 2006 is likely to see the emergence of viruses and remote Trojan programs which are custom written for individual organisations. “Essentially, the nature of worms and viruses will be the same, but they are expected to become more complex and sophisticated and also faster in speed such that an attack is often faster than the time taken to download the latest patch.”

Wireless devices in danger

If the new mantra of corporate work style is ‘going mobile,’ they will have company. Viruses, spam and other potential security threats are also targeting mobile devices such as PDAs, Palm and cell phones. With an increasing number of people storing important data on mobile devices, security issues have moved onto a different level altogether. As a result, a lost PDA or smartphone with no protection makes easy pickings for thieves, hackers or competitors with regard to corporate information.

But vendors are up and out with relevant solutions. Trend Micro has introduced the Trend Micro Mobile Security 2.0, a Symbian-signed security solution for Nokia’s Series 60 platform.

RSA Security has also developed a new ‘RSA mobile authentication solution.’ The company’s Ross Wilson, Managing Director for South Asia and India, says that with this software, users can authenticate their identities with the help of their mobile system on Web sites and corporate networks that use the RSA solution.

Symantec has introduced the AntiVirus for Handhelds Corporate Edition 3.5, a virus protection solution designed to secure wireless devices running on Palm OS, Microsoft Windows Mobile and Pocket PC platforms.

SMBs: the key drivers

According to industry observers, one of the key drivers for this growth in security outsourcing would be the SMB market, which is undergoing a change from awareness to implementation. With SMBs driving the growth, the market will witness an increasing demand for easy-to-use solutions which will lead to increasing alliances between the security service and solution providers.

According to Biswas, “Gartner states that SMBs rated network security as their top IT priority in 2006. IDC’s SMB survey of 2005 indicated that 39 percent of companies having 100 to 1,000 employees have aggressive spending plans for upgrading their network security.”

According to Frost & Sullivan, in Q2 2005 SMBs accounted for about 19 percent of the total enterprise security market. Contribution to overall revenues from the SMB segment had decreased slightly compared to the previous quarter due to an increase in major projects of large businesses which helped increase the percentage contribution by this market segment.

According to a recent Trend Micro study of small and medium businesses, 85 percent of respondents said they wanted a vendor to advise them of security threats and provide guidance for protecting their business assets. Additionally, 72 percent said they preferred limited involvement in responding to an outbreak and that they wanted a security solution to protect their computer network in a seamless, self-sufficient manner.

Conclusion

Sales of security solutions have exceeded expectations in recent times. According to analysts, the momentum will be maintained in the coming year as well. A few years ago, discussions on security were limited to anti-virus and firewalls, but today companies are seriously analysing the causes of internal threats to their data. With the integration of technology into business processes, companies increasingly see security as an integrated part of their core business, offering an opportunity to security vendors.

megha@expresscomputeronline.com