APPLICATION SECURITY MARKET ANALYSIS

Application security describes security measures at the application level that aim to prevent data or code within the app from being stolen or hijacked. It encompasses the security considerations that happen during application development and design, however it also involves systems and approaches to protect apps after they get deployed. 

Statistics:

The application security market was valued at US$ 7.35 Bn in 2021 and is forecast to reach a value of US$ 33.06 Bn by 2030 at a CAGR of 18.5% between 2022 and 2030.

Figure 1: Global Application Security Market Value (US$ Bn) Analysis and Forecast, 2017 - 2030

Key Developments:

In December 2020, the IBM Corporation declared the acquisition of the Instana, a company that is dealing with the enterprise monitoring and application performance screening platform. This later helps in the growth of the company in the application management segment.

In December 2020, IBM Corporation declared that it has come into a deal to adopt Nordcloud, a European company that is dealing with the transformation in applications and the application management and the migration of the cloud. This acquirement will assist later in the IBM’s application security providing and reinforce the development of the hybrid cloud platform.

Market Drivers:

Driver 1:

Rising security breaches targeting business applications, increasing the use of mobile and cloud-based technologies, and stringent compliance and regulatory requirements for application security is expected to drive the growth of the global application security market. For instance, according to F5 Labs, web and applications causes 30% of the overall breaches with an average reported cost to be USD 8 million per breach.

Driver 2:

The Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) database has listed many vulnerabilities in commonly used applications and found out that few applications had no patches available. Even if patches are available then consumers and enterprises do not apply them, making cybercriminals more efficient in breaking application codes. This is expected to drive the growth of global application security market.  According to Security Boulevard, 60% of breaches involved vulnerabilities for which a patch was available but not applied.

Figure 2: Global Application Security Market Share (%), By Region, 2021

Market Restraint:

Restraint 1:

The biggest challenge for organizations is to address the high cost of innovation for application security solutions due to budget constraints as well as the lack of application security expertise. This is expected to hinder the growth of the global application security market.

Restraint 2:

When applications do not extend beyond business-critical activities, such as payment related activities or to order goods and services, enterprises leave thousands of applications susceptible. Unused business-critical applications are harmful as they are not updated from time to time. This is expected to hamper the growth of global application security market.

Market Opportunities:

Opportunity 1:

Application security covers web and mobile applications that pass through various phases of the security development life cycle. For instance, security design and security coding. Various AI specific areas, such as ML and expert systems, can be leveraged to improve application security to derive, predict, or apply inferences to forecast security threats. It also identifies the security vulnerabilities and the security coding remediation guidance. This is expected to offer lucrative opportunities in the growth of global application security market.  

Opportunity 2:

Security auditors with the help of few technologies can automate attack threat identification and the code review process. Many organizations have adopted AI and ML for application development programs such as FuGen X, USM Business Systems, and BR Softech. This is expected to propel the growth of global application security market.

Market Key Takeaways/Trends:

Trend 1:

The on-premises deployment mode is the traditional approach to execute application security solutions across enterprises. This is also associated with the term known as ‘in-house software development.’ On-premises solutions offer organizations with a full control over all platforms, applications, systems, and data, which is handled and managed by their IT staff. This is expected to act as a key trend in the growth of global application security market.

Trend 2:

Organizations, where user credentials are critical for business operations, usually have on-premises deployment as the information is considered to be moderately safe from external attacks since systems are held internal to the organization. This is expected to act as a key trend in the growth of global application security market.

Competitive Landscape:

Major companies operating the global application security market are IBM Corporation, WhiteHat Security, Inc.( NTT Security Corporation), Oracle Corporation, Veracode (Thoma Bravo), Qualys Inc., Micro Focus International PLC, Positive Technologies, Checkmarx Ltd, Fasoo.com Inc., Synopsys Inc., Contrast Security, Rapid7 Inc. and SiteLock LLC.