SDN, NFV will bolster managed security services, says analyst firm

As service providers implement SDN and NFV into their networks, they can scale the delivery of managed security services -- one that grew 9 percent year-over-year to $17.4 billion in 2015, says IHS Research.

Over half, or 54 percent, of security revenue in 2015 came from customer premises equipment (CPE) based services, while cloud contributed 46 percent. The research firm said that this trend will reverse by 2020. Although cloud-based managed security services will continue to rise, many service providers expect managed CPE-based service revenue to continue to grow with the advent of virtual CPE solutions.

Cloud-based security sales were robust in 2015, growing 12 percent year-over-year. IHS has forecast that the segment is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 9 percent over the five years from 2015 to 2020. The largest contributor to cloud-based security service revenue is content security, followed by managed firewall services, other security services, distributed denial of service (DDoS) mitigation, and intrusion detection and prevention systems. Release