The security market in the Asia-Pacific region grew 28.3 percent in 2008, Gartner said. Despite this growth being slower than the 36 percent recorded in 2007, it showed that demand for IT security did not suffer significantly from the downturn.
Matthew Cheung, senior research analyst at Gartner, described the 2008 growth as "remarkable", considering that it was in the fourth quarter of that year when global economies began to feel the impact of the credit crunch and global downturn.
"Double-digit growth in a challenging economic climate confirms that security remains a key priority for Asia-Pacific CIOs and IT security leaders," Cheung said in a press statement released Thursday.
Gartner noted that the demand for data security and privacy, as well as the need to protect IT infrastructure from the ever-increasing numbers of sophisticated and targeted attacks, were key drivers fueling the growth of IT security software spending in the region.
For organizations in mature markets such as Australia, Singapore and Hong Kong, compliance was also observed to be a major driver.
In Singapore, Gartner said the security software market showed above average growth of 27.9 percent in 2008, reaching revenues of US$31.3 million.
But over in Hong Kong, the expansion at 20.4 percent was lower than average due to the territory's negative gross domestic product (GDP) growth in 2008 and its maturing IT environment.
China was the largest security market in the Asia-Pacific region last year, followed by Australia and South Korea.
Cheung attributed China's 39.4 percent expansion to the high level of growth in local security players such as Rising and Kingsoft, the country's heavy spending on the 2008 Beijing Olympics, and the rapid rise of foreign investments into the country.
Other drivers included the modernization of IT infrastructure and domestic demand in the country.
Across the region, the secure Web gateway (SWG), security information event management (SIEM) and e-mail security market segments enjoyed 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.
SaaS gets popular
Gartner noted a growing popularity for security products to be delivered through the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model or as an appliance.
According to Bjorn Engelhardt, vice president of Symantec's Asia-Pacific and Japan SaaS group, the more mature markets such as Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore were the first to embrace SaaS. But over the last year, the security vendor has also seen significant growth in emerging markets including China and India.
"Overall, we’re seeing [SaaS] adoption rates in the range of 5- to 15 percent across the Asia-Pacific region," Engelhardt said in an e-mail.
The SaaS model is perfect for emerging markets in the region, according to him.
"The region is home to more than 20 million SMBs (small and midsize businesses) that are simultaneously the biggest target for Internet-based security threats and the least well-equipped to deal with the problems," he said.
Having commited their limited IT resources to operational duties and development projects, dealing with security issues is an expensive, resource-hungry necessity for these SMBs, Engelhardt added.
"They want to use advanced solutions but are not able to make large upfront investments to purchase them. So the subscription model that is inherent in SaaS security solutions is ideal for them."
Gartner reported that Symantec maintained its lead with 22 percent of security software revenue in the Asia-Pacific region in 2008. Trend Micro was next,garnering 8.2 percent, while McAfee's 7.4 percent placed it in third position.
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