Will cloud and datacentre players spend big on security?

Qualitative research from the US suggests an increased interest in security in wake of NSA revelations

A survey from Infonetics has suggested that cloud and datacentre operators are investing more in security these days.

The US market research firm has concluded a 25-page study of 23 operators based all over the globe, asking them about their cloud and datacentre strategies around security and their opinions of 12 vendors.

Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics, said the main concern for services providers appeared to be getting security infrastructure to match the performance of the network infrastructure.

"The recent disclosures about the NSA stealing data from prominent datacentres are causing a new wave of panic, forcing cloud and datacentre providers to feverishly shore up their networks and systems," Wilson asserted.

Performance requirements are being driven skywards by infrastructure upgrades and the increasing size and scale of cyber attacks, he said.

"Due to infrastructure and interface upgrades, many operators surveyed are planning serious spending on good old-fashioned firewalls; DDoS prevention systems are also a top priority," according to Infonetics.

For respondents deploying virtual security appliances, the drivers had shifted away from visibility and management functions to security, it wrote.

Software-defined networking (SDN), though, was not yet a main driver of security spend.

There was no clear leader as per security vendor -- although Arbor, Cisco, Juniper, Check Point, Fortinet and McAfee were all viewed as "key".

"Many respondents are also evaluating products from F5 and Palo Alto Networks," it said.