Worldwide security software revenue totaled $16.5 billion in 2010, a 12 per cent increase from 2009 revenue of $14.7 billion, according to Gartner, Inc. The 2010 results show that overall vendor revenue demonstrated a rebound in growth after a sharp fall in performance in 2009 due to the slow economy and tight IT budgets.

“Products within the security market are undergoing rapid evolution, in terms of both new delivery models — with security as a service showing increasing popularity — and new technologies being introduced, often by startup companies,” said Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner. “Key vendors continued to expand their product portfolios, buying companies where appropriate and expanding their reach into emerging markets.”

Growth across the security segments showed great levels of variation, with more mature areas, such as end-point security and web access management, showing single-digit growth, while security information and event management (SIEM) and secure web gateway products experienced double-digit growth.

Symantec retained its market share lead and accounted for nearly 19 per cent of total security software revenue in 2010. Performance of the largest players varied considerably; Symantec, Trend Micro and IBM recorded below-average growth, while other larger players, such as EMC, experienced above-average growth.