Channel's antispam revenues have surged by 500 per cent so far this year - Context

Market watcher Context has found that endpoint security and network security have both seen sales in Europe decline so far in 2021

Channel revenue sales for anti-spam products have skyrocketed by almost 524 per cent so far in 2021, compared to the same period last year, according to Context.

The analyst firm's figures for revenue through European IT distribution placed cloud security as the highest performer, logging growth of more than 22 per cent as companies armed themselves against the rise in cyberattacks.

Related categories which also saw healthy growth were data protection (102 per cent) and mail security (30 per cent).

Another well performing sub-category in the cloud security space was control management, which recorded a revenue surge of just over 104 per cent.

Context said the revenue spikes can also be linked to demand from hospitals and public sector institutions for security for their PaaS and IaaS platforms.

However, the market watcher found that endpoint security (-11 per cent) and network security (-3.5 per cent) sales slumped.

It explained that this was to be expected given the "huge surge in sales during March and April last year" when countries first went into lockdown, making comparisons less favourable.

According to UK government figures, 83 per cent of businesses that admitted suffering a security breach last year were hit by phishing attacks, followed by 27 per cent that categorised the attack as "impersonation".

"Phishing is involved in a large percentage of data breaches, and concerns are mounting over the impact on corporate finances and reputation, so we're seeing strong growth in cloud-based anti-spam, data protection and email security products," said Context manager, research and business development, Joe Turner.

"However, it's important to remember that one of the biggest and most unpredictable risk factors in corporate cybersecurity is users, so any product investments should be accompanied by a renewed focus on employee training and awareness raising programmes."