IT security demand surging

Local demand for advanced IT security by enterprises will continue to experience double-digit growth in 2017 on the back of expanding digital payment services, says an industry expert.

“We expect to see the enterprise security market grow by at least 10-12% this year, up from 3.5 billion baht in 2016,” said Nakrop Niamnamtham, managing director of nForce Secure, one of Thailand’s leading enterprise IT security distributors with a 22% market share.

Firewall and endpoint security management each accounted for 40% of IT security spending. The remaining 20% came from secure content management.

But Mr Nakrop said secure content management is a high-growth segment as businesses increasingly focus on protecting enterprise data, especially sensitive data, including financial transactions.

He said a one-time password (OTP), which is only valid for one login session or transaction on a computer system or other digital device, will soon no longer be secure enough to authenticate and verify a banking transaction.

Multi-factor authentication, a security system that requires more than one method of authentication from independent categories of credentials to verify the user’s identity for a login or other transaction, is set to replace the traditional OTP soon, Mr Nakrop said.

Moreover, Content Disarm and Reconstruction, a computer security technology for removing malicious code from files, will increasingly gain traction as a security technology that can isolate malicious code from legitimate content.

He also said a shortage of information security professionals poses a critical challenge to the cybersecurity industry.

Cybersecurity has become increasingly important, especially for businesses, because of the rise of cyberattacks, which is being spurred by the rapid proliferation of Internet of Things (IoT) devices.

Global IT research firm Gartner Inc estimates the damage caused by distributed denial of service attacks using IoT devices will reach US$434 million globally in 2017, up from $388 million in 2016.

“NForce expects revenue to grow by 15% this year, outpacing the overall industry’s growth,” said Mr Nakrop.