HERNDON, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--OPAQ Networks, a security-as-a-service provider, today announced the results of its Network Security Study conducted by industry analyst firm 451 Research. The study examines the security needs, challenges, and spending priorities of mid-tier businesses.
The study revealed that mid-tier companies are battling a black hole of time, security expertise, and budget to procure, implement, and manage a variety of security products. 82 percent of respondents indicated they spend 20 to 60 hours of in-house staff resources a week to do that. Despite the well-documented challenges associated with finding and retaining security professionals, the study revealed that nearly three-quarters of the respondents dedicate between 3-5 full-time employees to manage their security. The financial hit to mid-tier businesses is an average of $178,000 annually just for network security, which represents 39 percent of an organization’s total IT security budget.
According to the study, the financial burden will continue to increase, and signs point to network security as a significant business priority. Network security spending will grow nearly twice as fast as overall IT security spending over the next five years, projecting a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 8.9 percent, from $2.4 billion in 2016 to $3.5 billion in 2021. Forty percent of respondents project their spending on network security will increase between 10 to 20 percent in the next 12 months.
“The security challenge for mid-tier businesses is multi-dimensional. For these businesses, everything seems to be increasing—attack frequency, compliance requirements, complexity, costs, and the number of security products that need to be managed,” said Daniel Cummins, analyst at 451 Research. “Cloud-based security-as-a-service offers potentially significant advantages in terms of simplicity and access to security that may prove to be less complex and expensive than traditional approaches.”
Security-as-a-Service Model Winning Over Mid-Market Companies
The study heralded a potentially seismic shift in the channel ecosystem and how security is delivered to mid-tier businesses.
Nearly 40 percent of respondents indicated part-time employees, contractors, and Managed Security Service Providers (MSSPs) manage their security workload. However, 72 percent of respondents indicated a preference for security-as-a-service compared to MSSP (9 percent) or on-premise (19 percent) solutions for managing security.
“We thought there would be a preference for the ease and simplicity of security-as-a-service solutions, but we were genuinely surprised by both the degree and urgency of the market demand. 87 percent of respondents said their timing for migrating to this type of network security delivery model was within a 12 month time frame,” said Ken Ammon, Chief Strategy and Technology Officer, OPAQ Networks. “MSSPs are and will continue to play an important role in advising and supporting incident response, but this study reveals that MSSPs should look to leverage cloud-based solutions in order to deliver what the market is demanding.”
Other significant findings from 451 Research’s Network Security Market Study include:
- The most desired cloud-based security capabilities were data loss prevention, network access control, and encryption, followed by threat management, application control, SSL decryption, and URL filtering.
- The top cloud-based security use cases cited were threat management and branch office enablement and optimization, followed by multiprotocol label switching (MPLS) displacement, MSSP displacement, on-demand security, and securing SaaS applications.
- More than 60 percent cited legacy IT as the greatest barrier to improving visibility and control within their networks, followed by lack of budget at 27 percent.
The 451 Research study, which was fielded during the first quarter of 2017, surveyed 301 IT security professionals at US-based businesses with 500 to 2,500 employees.
To download the 451 Research report and to access report infographics, visit www.opaqnetworks.com/451study.
About OPĀQ Networks
OPAQ Networks breaks the traditional security mold with its cloud-based service that empowers organizations to simplify, centralize, and secure their networks. OPAQ Networks’ management platform integrates networking and security in a way that reduces complexity and costs, tightens security control, and establishes a truly agile infrastructure that allows organizations to more easily keep ahead of emerging threats and instantly adapt to business and regulatory requirements. Based in Northern Virginia, OPAQ Networks is a privately held company that has earned the trust of reputable brands.
