DDoS focus freshens in the datacentre

Sales of DDoS-prevention appliances are on the rise, says Infonetics

Global sales of DDoS-prevention appliances climbed 26 per cent year on year to $348m (£207m) in 2013, although Q1 of 2014 did not build further on that.

The statistic is from US-based markets analyst Infonetics Research, which also gave figures for Q1 of 2014 of $91.5m – representing steady sales in the new year rather than extravagant expansion.

Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for security at Infonetics, indicated that mobility and datacentre growth are encouraging carrier and enterprise purchases of anti-DDoS kit to support that expansion.

"Buyers need protection from a new wave of sophisticated application layer attacks and massive amplification attacks, and we're seeing renewed focus on DDoS mitigation from a wide range of established datacentre and security players such as Check Point, Fortinet, Juniper, F5, and Huawei," Wilson said.

Arbor Networks continues to lead in the space, although there is "a wide range of challengers, from focused product vendors in adjacent markets to large established networking and security vendors", he continued.

North America is leading in regional terms, with EMEA following. Asia-Pacific, and the Caribbean and Latin America took third and fourth spots in Q1 of 2014 terms of revenue.

"The datacentre and mobile DDoS prevention segments are projected to maintain healthy double-digit CAGRs from 2013 to 2018," Wilson said.

"Software-defined networking (SDN) and network functions virtualisation (NFV) are pervasive trends in network and telecom infrastructure, and they will eventually touch all areas of security, including DDoS mitigation."

Infonetics releases its DDoS-prevention report twice a year, including information on market size and share, analysis and trends to 2018. More than 12 vendors are tracked.