11/27/2007 -- Cisco Systems Inc. is one of the mindshare leaders in the content security segment. And that's a good thing, according to industry watchers, because as organizations get more serious about content security over the next few years, the vendors that have the broadest portfolios will capture the most customers.

That's one upshot of a new study from market watcher Infonetics Research. The study, "User Plans for Content Security," says that the vendors who offer the widest variety of device types -- including unified threat management (UTM), intrusion prevention system (IPS), standalone and network-integrated devices -- will, in all likelihood, snag the lion's share of potential customers.

"Most organizations cobble a content security solution together over time from a variety of different components, typically as a reaction to new threats, and while this may give them good protection at the time of implementation, it's expensive and unmanageable over the lifetime of the products," said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for network security at Infonetics Research, in a statement.

Infonetics' study features scorecard ratings of six leading content security manufacturers: Cisco/IronPort, IBM/ISS, Juniper, McAfee, Symantec, SonicWALL and Trend Micro. It ranks Cisco and Symantec as dual mindshare leaders in the content security space -- although according to Infonetics there's plenty of opportunity for new competitors to enter the fray, in part because of a pressing need for highly integrated and higher-performance products.

Elsewhere, the market watcher found, data leakage protection and application visibility and control are the two most exciting emerging areas in the content security segment. The top content security drivers, on the other hand, are data loss, business continuity and regulations and/or compliance.

Spam protection is a key driver in both small and medium-sized organizations, although fewer large organizations rate that problem as "critical."

Not surprisingly, cost is the No. 1 barrier to customer deployments of new content security solutions. --Stephen Swoyer