Security spending tops $250 million says IDC

Security spending in the Gulf is set to grow by 37.4% this year, to create a market worth $250 million, according to IDC.

The analyst company said in its latest report on the region, that expenditure on security appliances and software grew by 60% in 2006, with the market predicted to continue to grow at an average rate of 23% each year through to 2011.

Growth in the financial sector, and an increasingly sophisticated enterprise sector was driving demand, according to the report.

Security expenditure was focused on perimeter defence, with threat management solutions making up 56.4% of 2006 total spend, marking a growth of 61.2% year-on-year. Spending on Secure content Management was also high, taking up 24% of expenditure, and security and vulnerability management ranking as third highest expenditure with 11.4%.

Biggest spenders on security solutions were government, which accounted for 26.9% followed by telecommunications and finance, with 22.6% and 21.2% share respectively. Unsurprisingly Saudi Arabia made up the bulk of spending, accounting for 41% of the market, with the UAE second on 31.2%. IDC predicts that all GCC markets will continue to show double-digit security spending growth in 2007, with Saudi Arabia expected to grow by 45%, the UAE by 36.6% and Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar by 27.2%.

Three vendors, Cisco, Juniper and Symantec took the lion's share of spending, accounting for 49% of the market.

Vinay Nair, senior analyst, IDC MEA commented: "The IT security market benefits heavily from investments in basic infrastructure by companies across the region, which inevitably includes threat management and secure content management technologies. But it doesn't end there. The rapidly growing consumer banking sector has a cartload of compliance rules that require a variety of security solutions and a large number of firms - particularly in the UAE - are making increasingly sophisticated investments in information leakage detection & prevention technology."