It comes as no surprise that the value of the application security market has risen dramatically in the last few years. Simple deduction tells us bigger cyber-attacks = more money spent on cyber defense. However, the latest claim by market analysts is that by 2021, the total value of the market will grow from its current $2.2 billion to a whopping $6.7 billion, in just five years.
Application security is basically the safeguarding of specifically applications, rather than the full network and attack surface. As we well know, vulnerabilities in applications are a common route to a full cyber-attack and possibly a data breach, using techniques such as Remote Code Execution, SQL Injection, Cross Site Scripting and, among many others.
This latest report, from analysts MarketsandMarkets has recognised that with increased interaction between organisations and individuals, application security is increasingly critical, or in their words ‘In today’s hyper-connected business environment, there is rapid emergence of digital solutions and devices, which is based on communication between various business-critical applications and data’. So yes, we’re more connected and therefore, more vulnerable.
While it’s said that the US market is obviously going to grow, the fastest rate of growth will be seen in the Asia-Pacific market, who are rapidly expanding in this vertical. Among the organisations named at being the forefront of application security is Acunetix, a recognition that our early work in the field and well developed expertise in the area of vulnerability scanning gives us the type of products valued in this growing market.
Acunetix’s products include a combination of DAST (Dynamic Application Security Testing) and, IAST (Interactive Application Security Testing) techniques, which means users can use both automated and interactive tools to test their application security. The MarketandMarkets report has predicted that while SAST offerings will certainly grow, IAST is the type of solution likely to grow at a more exponential rate.
They also recognise that application security tools are being adopted in a growing number of industries, including main target areas banking, government and defense, financial services, retail and healthcare. One of the reasons these tools are predicted to rise in popularity is the growing needs of SMEs (Small and Medium Enterprises) due to the increased risk of attack and the expanding requirements of compliance.
While analysts admit that these SaaS providers face many challenges in their growth, such a lack of application security expertise within industries and insecure cryptographic storage, their predictions remain for a huge increase in the market, at a Compound Annual Growth Rate of 24.8% over the next five years.
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