Canalys, a global technology market analyst firm, said in its latest report that the worldwide cybersecurity market increased 9.7% year on year in Q1 2020. At the end of the quarter, at the height of the panic over the COVID-19 pandemic, governments imposed lockdowns that forced companies to issue work-from-home orders to ensure business continuity.

According to Canalys, the total investment reached $10.4 billion, which includes network security, endpoint security, web and email security, data security, and vulnerability and security analytics.

Cisco was the leading cybersecurity vendor during the first quarter, accounting for 9.1% of total investment. Palo Alto Networks remained its closest challenger, with a 7.8% market share. Fortinet maintained its momentum and increased its share to 5.9%. Check Point was the fourth-largest vendor, accounting for 5.4%, while Symantec rounded out the top 5 vendors with 4.7%.

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But growth in cybersecurity will be under pressure as IT budgets are reassessed to account for worsening economic conditions. This is despite the critical point of protecting organizations’ data assets, operations, and employees from increasing threats and vulnerabilities. Also, the planned increases in cybersecurity spending over the next 12 months will be either reduced or halted completely.

Growth

“Endpoint security shipments increased by 16.9% to represent 15.4% of the total cybersecurity market,” said Matthew Ball, chief analyst, Canalys. “This strong growth continued into Q2, as more countries implemented lockdown measures. But network security only grew 4.0% as the hardware appliance business for some vendors was affected by supply chain constraints. Many organizations were able to either better use existing network access through service engagements or increase capacity through additional licenses rather than buildout new network security infrastructure. Web and email security grew 13.8% year on year as organizations continued to expand their use of cloud-based services and software-as-a-service applications, including Office 365.”

Canalys observed that cybersecurity vendors responded quickly to the crisis, enabling organizations to secure new remote workers temporarily, and giving back visibility and control after many had bypassed policies to ensure continuity.

Free tech services

Cisco extended free licenses for its Umbrella, Duo Security and AnyConnect Secure Mobility Client products to both existing and new customers. It also announced its $2.5 billion Business Resiliency Program to keep its pipeline healthy. Palo Alto Networks launched its financial services arm to offer extended payment terms, in addition to free 90-day trials for its GlobalProtect offerings. Juniper Networks provided free trials of its vSRX to customers to expand firewall capacity, as well as free trials of AppSec, IPS and SecIntel.

Bitdefender aimed its 12-month free access offer at healthcare organizations, while Kaspersky also made its Endpoint Security offerings and Hybrid Cloud Security available for free to the sector. Trend Micro provided its Maximum Security product free for six months to workers having to use their own devices. McAfee offered short-term three-month burst licenses for its endpoint, DLP, Unified Cloud Edge and CASB products.