DDoS prevention market on big growth curve

Infonetics predicts volume and intensity of attacks will fuel market expansion

The distributed denial of service (DDoS) prevention market is set to explode in the coming years as the frequency and intensity of attacks continues to spiral.

Infonetics Research predicts that the global market will grow 24 per cent this year. By 2016, the analyst forecasts that annual spending on DDoS prevention will reach $420m (£270m).

Currently Arbor Networks is the dominant market leader, accounting for almost 60 per cent of total revenue. But Radware is putting up a stiff challenge in the government sector, according to Infonetics.

The datacentre segment of the market is growing quickly and its worth is expected to exceed the carrier transport sector by the end of this year. The mobile networks arena is the DDoS prevention space's fastest expanding area, with a forecast compound annual growth rate of 30 per cent for the 2011 to 2016 period.

Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics, predicted that the core DDoS market players would be increasingly challenged by hosted offerings of hardware with embedded security.

He pointed to the recent Arbor Networks-Alcatel-Lucent tie-up, which saw a router from the comms vendor combined with a DDoS mitigation blade from the security specialist. Wilson also cited F5's recent release of a datacentre firewall which incorporates DDoS prevention.

"We expect other major security vendors to build specialised security platforms with integrated DDoS prevention that will go head to head with mid-range offerings from the dedicated DDoS appliance vendors," added Wilson.