MUMBAI: The content filtering landscape is witnessing several changes. Traditionally, the Web, e-mail and instant messaging (IM) filtering markets have evolved separately. The uptake of solutions, especially in the e-mail filtering market, has been successful. As a result, the content filtering market is maturing and existing vendors are expanding and diversifying their product and service portfolios.
Frost & Sullivan (http://www.networksecurity.frost.com) finds that the World Content Filtering Market earned revenues of $1.31 billion in 2005 and estimates to reach $4.86 billion by 2012.
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Although the content filtering industry is maturing, there is growing demand from two areas, the first being security. Content filtering is increasingly overlapping with the broader security field. Malware attacks have increased in spread and potency. These attacks are increasingly motivated by financial gain. Phishing, botnets, denial-of-service and directory harvest attacks have become increasingly common over the last 18 months.
"Whilst the traditional issues of spam and employee productivity are still driving the content filtering market, protection against malware is becoming a strong driver for market growth," notes Frost & Sullivan Research Analyst Katie Gotzen. "With malware attacks becoming more sophisticated in nature, enterprises are eager to protect themselves. As a result, Web and e-mail filtering are becoming useful tools in the security battle of enterprises."
The second factor driving market growth is compliance. Legislation such as Sarbanes Oxley and HIPAA in the United States and the Data Protection Directive in Europe increasingly regulate the content of emails that leave an organisation. This is resulting in the increased uptake of email filtering solutions as well.
"The content filtering market is taking over the IM market as well, since most IM vendors have been bought by content filtering vendors and most content filtering vendors now possess IM filtering capabilities," notes Ms. Gotzen. The diversification trend also applies to delivery modes. Earlier, vendors delivered solutions in the form of either software, appliances or managed services. This trend has changed and vendors are now offering two or three of the options of software, appliances and managed services.
Vendors that are competing in only web or e-mail filtering and rely on a single delivery mode are rightfully concerned about their competitive potential. In such a scenario, considering mergers and acquisitions, or partnering in order to diversify their product offerings will prove beneficial. Diversification strategies can include both web and e-mail filtering, strengthening outbound e-mail filtering capabilities, or adding hardware and/or hosted services to product portfolios.
World Content Filtering Market is part of the Network Security Subscription, which also includes research in the following markets: web filtering, email filtering. All research included in subscriptions provide detailed market opportunities and industry trends that have been evaluated following extensive interviews with market participants. Interviews with the press are available.
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