Going best-of-breed is the way to stop intrusion prevention systems (IPS) from being a dying breed, says new research from Frost & Sullivan (F&S).
IPS technology has been a traditional and enduring part of security teams’ armories, enabling businesses to identify threats in their unique IT environments, thus becoming an essential layer of network protection. Moreover it is necessary to comply with industry and government regulations that mandate the implementation of measures to protect consumer, student and patient information, as well as systems used to store, transmit or process such data. The Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) is a prime example.
Such drivers, said the F&S report Analysis of the Global Intrusion Prevention System Market have made IPS functionality a fundamental requirement for large businesses and enterprise organizations. Given that there is no single solution that can meet the security needs of all organizations, F&S added, the IPS market will continue to be of strategic importance for many large security vendors. Indeed the analyst calculates that IPS market earned revenues of $1.41bn in 2014 and will grow to reach $1.58bn by 2019.
Yet the analyst also warned that demand for stand-alone IPS is shrinking as customers invest in integrated security appliances, and that pure-play IPS products face growing competition from adjacent security technologies. Similar network security tools such as next-generation firewalls and unified threat management (UTM) solutions, though offering limited IPS functionality, are increasingly considered sufficient.
“Being a competitive market that is reaching a late stage in its development, the IPS market is consolidating to a few high profile participants,” noted Frost & Sullivan network security senior industry analyst Chris Rodriguez. “Within these circumstances, IPS vendors must solidify their strategies to adapt to the increased competition from integrated security devices.”
F&S suggested that going forward vendors might, however, integrate IPS with related security technologies such as security information event management (SIEM) and advanced security analytics to enhance their value proposition.