Resellers will benefit as mobile security booms
Proper policy requirements come to the fore as study estimates market will rocket to $5bn by 2011
Demand for mobile security products is set to explode by 2011, according to a study from analyst Juniper Research.
Juniper claimed that the market for mobile security technology, which includes anti-virus, VPN, data and file encryption and mobile identity management applications, will reach almost $5bn by 2011, and will be installed on 247 million mobile phones worldwide. This year the market is estimated to be worth about $827m.
This is positive news for the channel, because revenues from selling the technology are set to double between 2008 and 2010, the analyst claimed.
Top of the list will be secure mobile content such as anti-virus, anti-spyware and content filtering technology, which accounts for 40 per cent of the total market. Mobile biometric solutions will contribute about $268m to the overall total by 2011.
Alan Goode, senior analyst at Juniper, told CRN: “The PC market has seen a lot of [mobile] products
and services bought by end-users and enterprise customers. Firms are starting to get a handle on the huge number of disparate hand-held devices people use on their networks.”
Goode said with the increased emphasis on compliance laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley and new data protection guidelines in the pipeline, firms are waking up to the need for properly secured mobile devices.
David Ellis, director of e-security at distributor Computerlinks, said: “Most mobile devices are run by individual employees rather than the business. These are cobbled onto the system rather than the IT department making a decision to adopt a proper security policy.
“However, once it does decide to roll out a proper policy, security will be a core element, and this is where the channel will benefit.”
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