Research firm the Yankee Group has declared that the world market for Internet security appliances is dead, ushering in a wave of more powerful network protection systems.
Yet top security appliance makers Symantec and Nokia Internet Communications reject this scenario, insisting that the market for their products is alive and kicking.
In two reports it released recently, Yankee claimed that the demise of the security appliance market had paved the way for the adoption of security service (SS) switches.
'SS switches are significantly superior to security appliances because they are designed to enhance security performance, whereas security appliances are optimised for network performance, specific to a particular host and application,' Yankee Group security solutions and service research director Matthew Kovar said.
Yankee advised its enterprise clients to stop buying security appliances.
It predicted that, by the end of this year, 25 per cent of the world's 100 largest companies would have deployed SS switches to protect their critical communications assets.