March 2012 OPSWAT Report on Worldwide Security Industry Market Share Analysis

OPSWAT Inc. has published their March 2012 report on “Security Industry Market Share Analysis”. The data OPSWAT used was collected between March 23, 2011 and February 15, 2012. It's worthwhile to check out the detailed report. You can also learn a bit more about the organization, the products, and tools OPSWAT has available.

Worldwide Security Industry Market Share Leaders

1. 16.3% - Avast

2. 11.7% - Avira

3. 11.0% - AVG Technologies

4. 10.1% - Microsoft

5. 10.1% - Eset

The top three remain the same from the December report. Microsoft replaced Symantec in the top five and pushed Eset down to number five. The most recent report provides details for the top 10 for all the AV data. The top 10 vendors had 87.5% of the market share. Fragmented industry, but a great deal of consolidation at the top. Visit the Virus Bulletin website to see a number of the other products. www.virusbtn.com

Worldwide Market Share Leaders – Product

1. Avast – 11.9%

2. Microsoft – 10.0%

3. Avira – 9.8%

4. AVG – 6.8%

5. Eset – 6.8%

The top 5 were unchanged from December with Microsoft surpassing Avira for the number two spot.

North America Vendor Market Share

Four vendors broke the 10% market share barrier in this report - Symantec (16.9%), Microsoft (14.9%), AVG Technologies (13.2%), and Avast (12.0%).

North America Product Market Share

The top four were unchanged from December – Microsoft (14.6%), Avast (9.2%), AVG (8.8%), and Norton (7.2%).

Highest Test Results Doesn’t Translate into Vendor Market Share

For example, in the av-comparat.org summary report for 2011, Kaspersky was Product of the Year. Avira, Eset, BitDefender, and F-Secure had the other top rated products. http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/01/av-comparatives-summary-report-2011.html

In the av-test.org Q4 Product Review and Certification Report, the top 5 products were Kaspersky Internet Security 2012, BitDefender Internet Security 2012 , F-Secure Internet Security 2012 , G Data Internet Security 2012, and Norton Internet Security 2012 http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/01/av-test-product-review-and.html

The OPSWAT report also contains information about Windows Operating System Deployments, and Backup (client and vendor) market share.

Check out OPSWAT’s demo of their Secure Virtual Desktop technology. It enables users to browse privately and anonymously from any computer. It protects sensitive data by ensuring that no traces of your activities are left ­ on the machine after exiting the secure session. Virtualization is hot.

www.securevirtualdesktop.com

About OPSWAT

OPSWAT market share reports are available at http://www.opswat.com/media/reports

OPSWAT was founded in 2002. OPSWAT provides software engineers and IT professionals with development tools and data services to power manageability and security solutions. www.opswat.com

AV-Comparatives.org

AV-Comparatives is an Austrian Non-Profit-Organization, which provides independent Anti-Virus software tests free to the public. www.av-comparatives.org

March 20 - Palo Alto Networks IPO Preparations Start to Heat Up

March 20 Addendum

Palo Alto Networks will seek to raise about $250 million in an initial public offering this year that would value the Internet security company at about $1.5 billion, said a person with direct knowledge of the situation.

The company chose Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Credit Suisse Group AG and Citigroup Inc. as its underwriters and will submit an S-1 filing in a couple of weeks.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-19/palo-alto-networks-said-to-file-250-million-ipo-in-weeks-1-.html

Nothing in the press yet as to what quarter the IPO will take place. Some more conversations will take place at Check Point and Juniper, most likely. Palo Alto Networks coined the phrase Next Generation Firewall (NGFW), though other companies rightfully can say that they offer the same functionality. SonicWall and Fortinet, for example. S-1's make interesting reading as companies have to start letting the investment community look more deeply into the company's financial workings, and view (the copious) risks that the company has identified.

Original Post

Palo Alto Networks has supposedly hired Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Citigroup to lead its (IPO) initial public offering, which is expected this year. The IPO market is definitely heating up. Palo Alto Networks received a recommended rating in NSS Labs’ latest firewall report. Palo Alto Networks was also recognized as a leader along with Check Point Software Technologies in the Gartner 2011 Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Network Firewalls. You can go to the Palo Alto Networks site to register for and download both the Gartner and the NSS Labs reports. Pundits will probably be coming up with a valuation in the coming weeks.

Strengths Gartner Mentioned Include

· Highly effectively application identification, application categorization, and ease of confguration

· Performed is as advertised in specification sheets (now that’s a novel idea ;))

A Few of The Cautions

· Lacks Common Criteria EAL-4+ for Information Technology Security Evaluation for the firewall

· Limited number of models when compared with competitors

· Some confusion with respect to selling into the secure web gateway (SWG) marketplace

http://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cam/gartner/index.php

NSS Labs 2 page analysis, the “2012 Next Generation Firewall Security Value Map™” was released during RSA San Francisco 2012. The value map illustrates Block Rate versus Price per Protected Mbps. The SonicWall SuperMassive E10800 and the Palo Alto Networks PA-5020 NGFWs were the “winners”, far up in the right hand corner. http://www.paloaltonetworks.com/cam/nss-labs/2012-svm.php

and http://kensek.blogspot.com/2012/03/sonicwall-palo-alto-networks-top.html

What would Palo Alto Networks valuation be in an IPO? You may want to look at the “ratios” from companies like Check Point Software Technologies, Juniper Networks, and Cisco and back calculate for some estimates as to its value during an IPO. Estimated revenues for PAN - $700 million.

Fun times for Founder and CTO Nir Zuk, principal engineer at Check Point Software Technologies and one of the developers of stateful inspection technology, and the rest of the Palo Alto Networks management team as this IPO moves forward.

http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/08/paloaltonetworks-ipo-idUSL2E8E88P820120308

Trustwave to Acquire M86 Security

Trustwave, a Chicago cloud based, provider of on-demand data security and payment card industry compliance management solutions, has come to an agreement to acquire M86 Security. M86 Security, based in Irvine, CA, is a combination of what were four separate companies several years ago. They may still be better known for some of their parts, Marshal, Avinti, 8e6, and Finjan than they are for the M86 Security name.

M86 Security is one of two Visionaries in the 2011 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Secure Web Gateways, competing against leaders Cisco, Blue Coat Systems (taken private by Thoma Bravo in February), Websense, McAfee, and Zscaler. They offer solutions in Web Security, email security, and have an SMB Security Suite. M86 does not offer the real time defense solution and web application controls that some of their competitors provide. However, they were the first company to deliver a hybrid cloud Web security service. M86 Security’s email security solution is one of the Visionaries in Gartner’s Magic Quadrant for Secure Email Gateways.

This is a nice acquisition for Trustwave. They gain 26,000 customers. It broadens their already extensive security portfolio. It gives them great brand recognition and entrees in the Secure Web Gateway and Secure email Gateway marketplace. The nice thing about the M86 Secure Web Gateway solution is that it can be deployed as a traditional appliance, virtual appliance, or a hybrid cloud option. Of course, companies like Zscaler, would beg to differ, stating that a cloud solution is the only way to go. Nonetheless, hybrid solutions are nice for companies considering the cloud without having to drink the cloud kool-aid (bit of a mixed metaphor).

M86 Security – Irvine, CA. Trustwave - Chicago. I see the Irvine office remaining.

To learn more about the respective companies - http://www.trustwave.com and http://m86security.com

SonicWall, Palo Alto Networks Top Performers in New NSS NGFW Study – Block Rate vs. Price per Protected Mbps

NSS Labs has published a great 2 page analysis, the “2012 Next Generation Firewall Security Value Map™” (NGFW). They released it during RSA San Francisco 2012. The value map illustrates Block Rate versus Price per Protected Mbps. The SonicWall SuperMassive E10800 and the Palo Alto Networks PA-5020 NGFWs were the “winners”, far up in the right hand corner. Juniper Systems and their SRX3600 suffered the opposite fate. Their performance line put one of the endpoints near the lower left hand corner, low Block Rate and the highest Price per Protected Mbps. Who knows if this will effect when Palo Alto Networks has their IPO (Initial Public Offering).

The study should help SonicWall (private company held by equity investment firm Thoma Bravo), strengthen their reputation as more than an SMB play. They have a broad portfolio solutions scaled up to the enterprise. The study also demonstrates that SonicWall is a major contender in the NGFW market. The company is more than a UTM (Unified Threat Management) company, which is how some of their competitors attempt to position SonicWall. Go to http://www.sonicwall.com to download the pdf.

A nice piece of viral or guerilla marketing on SonicWall’s part. They quickly had a rather large version of the value map standing in their booth. Coincidentally, the map stood between their booth and their neighbors, Barracuda Networks. The Barracuda Networks NGFW had both a lower Capture Rate and a higher Price per Protected Mbps. Ouch. Other companies on the value map – Fortinet, Stonesoft, and Check Point. This piece undoubtedly created booth traffic at both the participants' and the NSS booths. The race car and Barracuda’s “typical” trade show booth help were a nice diversion and seemed to generate a lot of booth traffic.

NSS Labs is an independent security research and testing company. They provide subscription-based information services and consulting, among other services. To learn more, go to http://nsslabs.com