The world's largest cybersecurity vendors ranked

Canalys says the cybersecurity industry was worth $37bn last year

Cisco has beaten off stiff competition from Palo Alto, Check Point, Fortinet and IBM to be named the largest cybersecurity vendor in the world.

According to research compiled by Canalys, Cisco grew its global market share by 22.5 per cent year on year, ahead of Palo Alto Networks.

Ketaki Borade, research analyst at Canalys, said: "The leading cybersecurity vendors have embraced new deployment models, with each in the process of transitioning their businesses to more subscription-based revenue and increasing transactions via cloud marketplaces.

"Cisco, Palo Alto Networks, Barracuda and Check Point are also the top cybersecurity vendors on the leading public cloud marketplace, AWS Marketplace, selling their virtual offerings on a per hour and annual basis. This is still a small part of their overall business but is the fastest-growing area.

"Barracuda, Trend Micro and F5 Networks also have a strong presence on cloud marketplaces, highlighting their early moves to adopt new deployments."

The research firm's data also showed that 2018 was a stellar year for cybersecurity, with global investment hitting $37bn, representing a nine per cent year-on-year increase on 2017's figure of $34bn.

However, cybersecurity still only represented two per cent of total IT expenditure last year, despite many organisations making it a priority on their digital strategies.

Canalys expects this figure to rise as new and more sophisticated cyberattacks emerge, providing vendors with further growth opportunities.

The analyst predicted that worldwide cybersecurity spend will surpass $42bn on an annual basis by 2020.

Michael Ball, principal analyst at Canalys, said: "Over the next two years, the transition in cybersecurity models will accelerate. Customers are changing their IT buying behaviour, with the adoption of public cloud, and flexible consumption and subscription services."

The research house's information also showed that traditional hardware and software deployment accounted for 82 per cent of the cybersecurity market in 2018, with the remainder of the market made up by the deployment of virtual appliances and agents, procurement through public cloud marketplaces and subscriptions to cybersecurity-as-a-service.

Ball stated that by 2020 traditional deployment will fall to 70 per cent as newer ways of delivering solutions become popular.

"Vendors will have to establish a diverse range of business models to support this transition, as different products suit different types of deployments.

"The key challenge to date for many has been making the new models more channel-centric and integrating them with existing partner programmes, especially customer transactions via cloud marketplaces.

"This has recently been addressed by some cloud marketplaces, allowing partners to offer customised deals and pricing direct to customers while tracking deal registration and rebates."