Frost & Sullivan (www.itservices.frost.com), World Intrusion Detection and Intrusion Prevention Systems Markets reveals that revenues in this market totaled $660 million in 2005 and could reach upwards of $2.35 billion in 2012.

With respect to the market drivers, regulatory compliance has become the single most important factor driving demand for IDS/IPS systems around the world. Legislation such as the Payment Card Industry (PCI), Data Standard, and Sarbanes-Oxley are forcing many organizations to enhance their security systems to ensure compliance and it seems unlikely that there be any decrease in the number of such regulations. On the contrary, the number of such regulations that organizations are required to adhere to is increasing and will be a major propellant for IDS/IPS deployments throughout the forecast period, as companies continue to deploy, upgrade, and maintain IDS/IPS solutions in conjunction with the legislation.

"Companies are under constant regulatory pressure from the industry and the government and unlike regulations of the past, new regulations mete out tangible penalties for non-compliance," notes Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst Robert Ayoub. "Increasingly complex attacks with a financial intent and a number of recent high-profile data loss cases such as DSW Shoes and Lexis-Nexis have further prompted interest in having effective security measures in place, thereby increasing budgetary allocations for IDS/IPS products."

Unfortunately, this drive towards spending to address regulations has caused an increase in the number of vendors jumping on to the regulation bandwagon. Many vendors are touting solutions to address all regulations issues and are causing a great deal of uncertainty amongst costumers. Moreover, customers are essentially distrustful of IPS technology and remain concerned about it blocking legitimate traffic. This, coupled with a large number of vendors making similar claims, has confused the market, in turn raising the demand for extended trials.

"The growing demand for on-site trials is increasing sales cycles by as much as three to six months, as benchmarking and evaluations are performed with actual demonstration devices running in the network infrastructure," says Ayoub. "This additional level of evaluation increases the amount of resources required by vendors in order to sell a product with some demonstrations requiring dedicated engineers during the trial period."

In addressing these challenges, IDS/IPS manufacturers need to have a marketing message that clearly specifies the challenges that their technology addresses. Presently, too many vendors are trying to be 'all things to all people' and are having difficulty competing against the larger more established participants.