Frost And Sullivan: Increasing Complexity Of Cyber Threats Compels Business Of All Sizes To Deploy Content Security Solutions

The growing secure content management market in the UAE is becoming less fragmented and more segmented, with solutions specifically designed for both small and medium businesses (SMBs) as well as large enterprises.

Over the next four to five years, the market is expected to be driven by context-aware and adaptive security features against known and unknown threats.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Analysis of the UAE Secure Content Management Market, finds that the market earned revenues of over $72.3M in 2012 and estimates this to reach $193.3M in 2018. While the service providers and banking, financial services, insurance (BFSI) verticals remained the top spenders, public sector companies are beginning to invest in enhancing their security infrastructure.

"The content security market is dominated by on-premises solutions; however, cloud-based security is gradually gaining momentum in the UAE," said Frost & Sullivan Information and Communication Technologies Senior Research Analyst Ankit Mishra. "Apart from technology trends, the market has also witnessed support from the increasingly stringent regulations that enforce security compliance among enterprises."

The rising sophistication of security threats, enterprises' growing dependence on e-mail and web applications, the popularity of the bring-your-own-device (BYOD) trend, and the growth of managed security service providers (MSSPs) have given a boost to the content security market in the UAE. Higher throughputs, more web-based applications, complex connections within applications, and access to large amounts of data have become a necessity within most enterprises.

The business landscape in the UAE is rapidly changing in terms of the way IT competencies are developed and delivered. The earlier model of accessing data though a local area network (LAN) or internal data centres is being replaced by a growing consumerisation of IT. The proliferation of employee-owned smart phones and tablet PCs in the corporate network has encouraged the development of security solutions designed specifically for BYOD.

Despite the market's potential, solution providers are hampered by a high shortage of skilled labour in the Middle East markets. This not only increases organisations' cost of business operations but also discourages companies from investing in the region.

"Security technology providers will not only desire a larger talent pool, but also strong regional and local distribution channels in the Middle East, especially the UAE, to establish business relationships with key end users," noted Mishra. "Overall, they can achieve sustained growth by offering data loss prevention management, policy-based encryption, and seamless integration between Web and e-mail security solutions, quality after-sales service, logistic support and technically skilled manpower."

Analysis of the UAE Secure Content Management Market is part of the Network Security Technologies Growth Partnership Service program. Frost & Sullivan's related research services include: Global Intrusion Prevention System (IPS) Market, Global Endpoint Security Products Market, Evolving IT Security Trends and Challenges Within Today's Organizations, and Global E-mail Content Security Market. All research services included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants.