These days, running a business without email security exposes you to huge, unnecessary risks and costs. What is the cost of security? It should not have a price tag. Imagine having to go through thousands of emails (mostly spam) every day, just to make sure an important message does not get deleted. This activity costs the company unnecessarily. A study by Nucleus Research Inc. reported that the management of spam costs U.S. business owners well over $71 billion per year in lost productivity, which translates to $712 for each employee. Wouldn’t you be better off spending a percentage of that lost revenue to protect yourself? After all, spammers aren’t the ones losing their shirts.
According to Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner, ‘Although the worldwide security software market is affected by the economic downturn, the growth of email security has not stopped as security remains a critical area where cuts cannot be afforded,’ and he is right. From my perspective, working in the Finance Department, I see it every day: big and small companies, even those on the verge of bankruptcy, have no second thoughts about paying for their email security support in full. They know that having unsecured mailboxes could be fatal to their business.
According to the same report by Gartner, ‘In the medium term, the greatest growth opportunities will come from! small and medium businesses (SMBs), which are in security catch-up mode compared with large companies and therefore spend a higher percentage of their budgets on security.’ I can’t really talk about all SMBs, but where I work, I know it’s a never-ending job. We work every day to make our products better and more efficient, constantly testing and pushing its limits. As soon as a new product is released, a new one is already under production.
ZDNet reported in 2005 that the email security market would grow an average 25% per year, but the high rate would not continue for more than 2 years, slowing down to $5.5 billion by 2010. At the time, it probably seemed a little optimistic. Well they were on the right track: the market reached over 4.4 billion in 2009 and it is not stopping.
Now let’s talk about the future. Marketwire predicts the email security market will reach nearly $6.7 billion in revenues by 2013. Knowing email security has become increasingly important to each and every company, it would not be surprising.
Sources:
1.http://www.gartner.com/it/page.jsp?id=1184713
2.http://blogs.zdnet.com/ITFacts/?p=9218
3.http://www.marketwire.com/press-release/E-mail-Security-Market-Is-Projected-Reach-Nearly-67-Billion-Revenues-2013-1022049.htm
4.http://www.spamlaws.com/spam-financial-risks.html
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