In 2023, the global revenue from security products surged to $106.8 billion, marking 15.6% increase from the previous year, according to the latest report from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Semiannual Security Products Tracker. The report highlights robust growth across all six major product categories, each registering double-digit year-over-year expansions.
Network Security emerged as the top technology category, generating global revenues of $27.4 billion. Nearly 75% of this revenue was driven by four key secondary markets: Firewall/Unified Threat Management (UTM), Secure Web Gateway, Web Application and API Protection, and Virtual Private Network (VPN)/Zero Trust Network Access (ZTNA). Additional secondary markets within Network Security include Segmentation, Infrastructure Protection, Intrusion Detection Systems/Intrusion Prevention Systems (IDS/IPS), Cloud Access Security Broker, and Network Sandboxing.
Following Network Security, Endpoint Security and Security Analytics were the next largest categories, with revenues of $21.6 billion and $20.0 billion respectively.
The Endpoint Security market was primarily divided between Modern Endpoint protection and Consumer Digital Life Protection. For Security Analytics, nearly two-thirds of the revenue stemmed from Vulnerability Management and Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), with the rest from Network Security Analytics, Orchestration and Automation Tools, and Cloud-native XD markets.
Other significant technology categories included Identity and Access Management, Information and Data Security, and Cloud Native Application Protection Platforms (CNAPP), which together brought in a combined revenue of $37.8 billion for 2023.
CNAPP saw the highest year-over-year growth at 31.5%, underscoring its increasing importance. Identity and Access Management also experienced significant growth at 21.4%.
In terms of deployment trends, public cloud deployments captured a substantial share of the market, accounting for nearly two-thirds of all security product spending in 2023. The remaining spending was divided between on-premise deployments and hardware appliances.
The report identified Microsoft, Palo Alto Networks, Cisco, Gen Digital, and Fortinet as the top five companies in the security products market for 2023, collectively generating $28.8 billion in revenue, representing approximately 27% of the total market share.
Frank Dickson, group vice president of Security & Trust at IDC, highlighted that security is now a crucial topic at the board level, with cyber risk directly translating to business risk. Consequently, security spending remains resilient, seemingly unaffected by economic uncertainties. He noted that the rise of GenAI and other AI technologies is prompting higher budgets for security in 2024. This trend is driven by the need to secure GenAI applications and to enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of security analysts through AI assistants.
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