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Corporate data security is at the forefront of many minds, judging from the sterling performance of the security software sector

Tracking industry concerns about corporate information security, demand for security software jumped almost 20% last year, with spend hitting $10.4 billion, according to newly released numbers from Gartner.

While market share remained consolidated in the US and Western Europe, the strongest growth came from emerging economies, particularly Latin America at 40%. The Middle East, African and Asia/Pacific regions also showed solid growth at nearly 30%.

Almost half of the revenue pie is held by Symantec, McAfee and Trend Micro, the industry’s leaders in anti-virus software, but not all demonstrated the same growth rates. Symantec’s revenue rose 8% to $2.77 billion, but that slowed pace was enough

to shave three percentage points off its market share. McAfee and Trend showed growth of 14% and 15%, respectively.

IBM continued to build its security base (following its acquisition of Internet Security Systems), increasing its revenues by 31% to $608 million. And EMC, appearing on the leaders board for the first time as a result of its acquisition of RSA, reported revenues that more than doubled to $415 million. In contrast, CA saw its security software revenues fall by 3% to $419 million.

Principal research analyst Ruggero Contu identified compliance, data leakage and privacy issues as the primary drivers for growth of the industry, “along with the need to tackle the fast-evolving and sophisticated threat environment”.

Contu predicted that Microsoft’s entry into consumer security would begin to challenge prices in the segment, with that development eventually trickling through to business.

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