Host Intrusion-Prevention Software Market Expected To Grow

The market for so-called host intrusion-prevention software is projected to grow from $60 million in 2002 to $520 million by 2007, representing a compound annual growth rate of 52.7 percent, market research firm The Yankee Group said.

"Every three to six months there's some outbreak or malicious attack that causes IT departments to spend days scurrying around cleaning up," Yankee analyst Eric Ogren said. "Usually, the No. 1 buying motivator for security is to make sure you don't suffer this pain again."

Major vendors also are expected to drive the HIP software market as they gobble up the smaller vendors for their technology.

For example, network equipment giant Cisco Systems Inc. announced in January that it would acquire Okena Inc. of Waltham, Mass. And earlier this month, security vendor Network Associates Inc. said it had signed an agreement to buy Entercept Security Technologies for $120 million in cash. Other HIP vendors include Sana Security and WatchGuard Technologies.

Firewalls and security software that scans e-mail and attachments have become less effective as the number of public Internet protocols have grown. Today, HTTP, SSL, SMTP, and instant messaging are just some of the paths through which malicious code can breach a firewall, Ogren said. In addition, viruses are often hidden in Java and ActiveX code sent as e-mail attachments.

"[HIP] looks to make sure that no program is running that is not authorized," Ogren said. "The technology is oriented toward enforcing a positive behavior profile. Anything that's not part of that profile, it just denies."

The software sits alongside the kernel and intercepts an application before the kernel is allowed to execute. The tradeoff is the security application is always using about 5 percent of a computer's processing power, Ogren said. "It may not be a huge hit, but it definitely does take up computing cycles," he said.

The technology is particularly good for desktops and smaller Web server farms.

*This story courtesy of TechWeb.