IT Trends

Security Appliances Top $6.1 Billion in a Single Quarter

• By David Nagel
• 03/14/23

The security appliance market saw a substantial increase year over year, with five manufacturers dominating in the fourth quarter of 2022.

According to market research firm IDC, total revenues for security appliances worldwide came in slightly above $6.11 billion — a 4.7% increase from the same period the previous year. The top-5 manufacturers accounted for more than half of that, about $3.529 billion.

Palo Alto Networks topped the list, at $973.75 million, representing growth of 10.2% from the same period last year. Fortinet, which saw the greatest growth among the top 5, at 24.5% year over year, came in at $966.61 million. Cisco was third at $921.08 million, with 4% YoY growth. Check Point came in fourth, at $473.04 million with 2.3% growth. And SonicWALL rounded out the top 5 at $194.16 million, with 5.8% growth.

The rest of the market saw a decline of 2.4% year over year, coming in at $2.582 billion.

IDC defines the security appliance market as "the following technology categories (content management, IDP, traditional firewall, unified threat management, and VPN) and products (messaging security, WAM, web security, IDS, IPS, traditional firewall, unified threat management, hybrid VPN, IPsec VPN, and SSL VPN)."

According to IDC, the Americas saw the strongest overall growth, at 10% year over year, with the United States leading the way.

Overall, unified threat management (UTM) and firewalls accounted for 77.3% of the security appliance market, with UTM seeing the strongest growth of any category, at 8.9%.

IDC said it expects to see continued growth in security appliances this year.