4/29/2008 -- Downturn? What downturn? There's no downturn of any kind in the content security gateway segment, which surged by nearly 10 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007, hitting $1.6 billion.

And that's not all: Cisco Systems Inc. is a rising content security gateway power, cracking -- at long last -- the top five, thanks to its acquisition of the former IronPort Systems.

That's the upshot of a new report from market watcher Infonetics Research, which says that the content security gateway segment should continue to expand at a healthy clip, more than doubling by 2011 to reach $2.5 billion.

"The content security market is moving forward rapidly due to strong performance by vendors of all type and size serving a very real need to secure networks," said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst for network security at Infonetics Research, in a statement. "The uncertain state of the U.S. economy could actually help bolster this market; some buyers increase spending during a prolonged downtime because of increased criminal/hacking activity."

Not surprisingly, sales of Web and malware appliances accounted for just about half of all content security gateway appliance revenues in late 2007.

Symantec is the overall content security gateway leader (on a revenue basis), according to Infonetics, with Trend Micro, BlueCoat and McAfee clocking in at two, three and four. BlueCoat is the overall leader in the content security appliance segment, while Trend Micro leads the content security software segment.