While a variety of industries are suffering under the deepest downturn since World War II, the security-software industry appears to be weathering the current economic storm, according to business-intelligence firm Gartner.

The worldwide security market tallied up $13.5 billion in revenue in 2008, jumping nearly 19 percent compared to the previous year, the firm said on Monday. Increasing demand for application-based products, particularly in the e-mail-security and secure-Web-gateway segments, drove the growth, Gartner said. The economy, however, has made sales tougher to close.

"During times of economic uncertainty and budget restrictions, IT security leaders increasingly need to show business value and cost-effectiveness for security measures, and this has impacted and slowed sales cycles," said Ruggero Contu, principal research analyst at Gartner. "However, new product delivery methods, such as software as a service (SaaS) and host based offerings, and expected increasing interest from the small and midsize business (SMB) sector will sustain growth in the market in 2009."

The top-five security-software companies all increased their revenue in 2008, but only McAfee increased its share of the market, and that only by 0.1 percent. Symantec, the owner of SecurityFocus, topped the list, but its market share fell to 22.0 percent from 24.4 percent in 2007, Gartner's data indicated. Eastern Europe was the fastest growing region, logging 35 percent growth, but North America and Western Europe still accounted for more than 76 percent of the market.

Gartner forecasted that the security-software market will continue to grow in 2009, but at a slower rate of about 9 percent.

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