The cloud-based security services market will be worth $4.2 billion by 2016, market watcher Gartner claims, as companies seek out new ways to deliver low-touch and low cost security offerings.
The forecast follows on from an earlier prediction by the analyst house back in January, where it claimed the cloud will be used to deliver 10 per cent of overall IT security enterprise product capabilities by 2015.
Eric Ahlm, research director at Gartner, said cloud-based services are proving popular with buyers that need to rollout security products quickly for compliance purposes.
"Demand remains high from buyers looking to cloud-based security services to address a lack of staff or skills, reduce costs or comply with security regulations quickly," said Ahlm.
"This shift in buying behaviour...offers good opportunities for technology and service providers with cloud delivery capabilities, but those without [them] need to act quickly to adapt to this competitive threat."
The ease of deployment and relief from technology maintenance that cloud security services bring should provide users with immediate cost savings, Gartner added.
"Based on the value that cloud security brings, buyers may purchase less hardware or software and require fewer implementation services," said the organisation in a statement.
"In addition, cloud-based controls can provide more-current protection, sometimes avoiding complex and costly upgrades."
Looking ahead, the organisation flagged cloud-based tokenisation and security information and event management (SIEM) services as potential growth areas, as the regulatory pressure on organisations continues to increase.
"Much of the interest is attributed to regulatory compliance concerns and security buyers' need to reduce costs in the area of log management, compliance reporting and security event monitoring," said Gartner in a statement.
"However, many customers in the enterprise segment will remain cautious about sending sensitive log information to cloud services, and this will continue to be an important aspect for security-as-a-service providers to address," it added.
