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Research and Markets: Consumers Putting Pressure on ISVs and Equipment Manufacturers to Improve Software Security

Posted on: Tuesday, 12 July 2005, 09:00 CDT

Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c20627) has announced the addition of "Improving Software Security" to their offering.

Many IT Security attacks such as viruses, worms and hacker attacks exploit vulnerabilities within commercially-available software and operating systems. As a result, customers are increasingly putting pressure on ISVs and equipment manufacturers to reduce the number of vulnerabilities within their solutions before they are shipped and to introduce a greater degree of security functionality.

This report examines the market for software security testing tools and services among the ISV and internal end-user IT departments. It highlights the key drivers & inhibitors for such solutions and compares and contrasts the difference between the effectiveness of the two approaches. The report presents the findings of a survey of ISVs as to their security testing programs including who draws up policies and their propensity to outsource and it identifies the key vendors and services providers in the software security testing market place and identifies core areas of focus in the market.

At the moment, among ISVs particularly, security testing is most commonly part of the overall QA process because the areas are mutually complementary. Indeed, some quality assurance tools are currently being used for security purposes such as load balancing and strain-test tools being used to simulated denial of service conditions.

Because the number of vulnerabilities in a product will ultimately determine the perception of the quality of a solution, it is unsurprising that up to now most product testers have grouped the two areas together. A drawback to this approach is that, by not separating out the two areas, it is possible that not enough attention is given to security.

Certainly security and functionality sometimes conflict and it is important to balance both rather than have one rule out the other. The danger is that by not looking at them in separate lights, security gaps may be missed because the developer is not looking for problems with the right mind-set.

This report provides realistic forecasts of the revenues services firms and tool vendors can expect to generate from the market over the next 4 years. It provides an independent view of which vendors and services firms are most likely to meet customer expectations and presents actionable recommendations as to the best approaches to take to increase market share.

For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/c20627

Source: Business Wire

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