Service provider security plans, views on security vendors

CAMPBELL, USA: A new study published this week by market research firm Infonetics Research -- Service Provider Security Drivers, Spending, and Vendor Leadership: Global Survey -- provides insight into incumbent, mobile, security specialist, competitive and cable operators’ security investment plans and how they perceive various vendors in the network security market.

“The security market is ripe for a product manufacturer to come out with an end-to-end security story for service providers, offering solutions embedded into network elements, standalone security products for transport networks and the data center, and client solutions service providers can deliver for differentiation (or even monetizing),” advises Infonetics Research’s Jeff Wilson, principal analyst, security.

Survey highlights
* Nearly every service provider interviewed by Infonetics expects to increase security spending over the next year, in absolute dollars and as a percent of capex.
* The biggest drivers for service providers to deploy new security solutions are protection of customer data, network uptime, changes in the data center, and the increasing number and complexity of security threats.
* The convergence of network traffic growth and increased security threats has spurred telecom operators to make investments in all areas of security, from basic firewalls and DDoS prevention to advanced protection against web-borne threats.
* Data center consolidation and upgrades is forcing many service providers to invest in security solutions at two ends of the spectrum: extremely high performance hardware solutions that can handle hundreds of Gigabits to Terabits of traffic, and virtual appliances installed on virtualized servers (increasingly the deployment model of choice for securing cloud infrastructure and providing cloud security services).
* Juniper, Symantec, McAfee, and Cisco lead for brand awareness among respondent operators.
* Juniper received the best overall marks from operators, with the most respondents considering them a leader in technology, management, price-to-performance ratio (value), financial stability, and service and support.