Managed Security Services in EMEA focus on providing active remediation

Managed security services (MSS) have traditionally focused on monitoring the customer security environment to guard against advanced persistent threats, botnets, zero-day attacks, and countless malware variants. But faced with complex attacks by quickly evolving malware, organizations across Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) are seeking to establish partnerships with MSS providers (MSSPs) that go beyond security alerts to playing an active role in threat remediation.

New analysis from Frost & Sullivan, Analysis of the EMEA Managed Security Services Market, finds that the market generated revenues of $2.8 billion in 2013, and estimates that this will reach $5.0 billion in 2018. The United Kingdom is currently the largest regional market, although it will be overtaken by Germany before 2018.
The adoption of high-end MSS will drive rapid growth in the Nordics and the Middle East. Traditional MSS uptake, specifically security asset monitoring and management, will fuel revenues in Central and Eastern Europe, Southern Europe, and Africa.

“Standard MSS solutions, which include security asset monitoring and management, and risk and compliance management, represent approximately 80 percent of the total EMEA MSS market and are expected to continue expanding at high rates,” said Frost & Sullivan Network Security Industry Principal, Frank Dickson. “However, threat intelligence, research, detection and remediation services are likely to grow at a rate twice that of security asset monitoring and management, becoming a critical focus area that will distinguish market leaders from the rest.”

MSSPs should effectively communicate and demonstrate their security competencies to current and potential customers. This is especially crucial as many enterprise decision makers are unaware of the MSS capabilities of many EMEA-based communications service providers.

Importantly, being global is not always an advantage in EMEA. In fact, EMEA-based MSSPs highlight their lack of affiliation to the US government as a competitive advantage. Further, the basis of competition in the region is often not on a global or regional scale, but at the country level.

“Mere country level knowledge is often not enough; physical in-country presence is a huge differentiator in several vendor sourcing decisions,” said Frost & Sullivan ICT Research Director, Adrian Drozd. “As a result, MSSPs will continue to look for merger and acquisition opportunities to either fortify their portfolio or expand to new geographies or verticals.”

By establishing a large, cross-industry, cross-region customer base, MSSPs can develop strong security intelligence capabilities with a wider view on the threat landscape, thus enlarging their footprint in the EMEA MSS market.