Tremendous growth in the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) space helped the global security services market to post double-digit growth last year.

Figures from Infonetics Research reveal that worldwide revenue from managed security services stood at $9.4bn last year – a 12 per cent increase on 2008. Enterprise spending represents the largest slice of the market, but SME investment is growing at a faster pace, claimed the analyst. Managed firewalls remain the "bread and butter " of the on-premise services market.

A surge in demand for content security offerings saw global SaaS security revenue grow 70 per cent. SaaS currently represents a tenth of the security services market, but Infonetics predicts this figure will rise to 22 per cent by 2014.

Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics, said: “Despite the global economic meltdown that started in mid-2008, the security services market is strong and growing. The primary market drivers for security services include increasing global demand from organisations of all size due to the proliferation of security threats of all type; the complexity of current security solutions; widespread use of diverse devices; and the desire of product manufacturers and service providers to add recurring revenue and improve margins.

"Strong interest in and broad availability of SaaS security offerings will help drive strong growth in the overall managed security services market over the next five years."