Malaysia-Based SMBs to Invest US $45M on It Security This Year Says Ami-Partners; That's a Jump of 28% over Last Year and is Due to the Growth in E-Commerce and Mounting Awareness of the Importance Of E-Security

Business Wire, May 22, 2006

SINGAPORE -- Malaysia SMBs (employing between 1-999 employees) are expected to spend over US $45 million on IT security this year, representing an annual growth of over 28%. Spending on anti-virus will account for close to a quarter of overall IT security expenditure, with more than nine in ten PC-enabled SMBs having installed anti-virus software.

The importance of other security applications such as anti-spyware and anti-spam are clearly recognized by the larger organizations, with over a quarter of small businesses (SBs) currently using anti-spyware versus 65 % of medium businesses (MBs) having already deployed this technology in their organizations. In terms of anti-spam measures, adoption is significantly higher among MBs also.

When surveyed, it was found that a third of SBs, having less than 100 employees, regarded enhancing enterprise IT security as important or very important, compared with 64% of MBs employing 100-999 employees. "Clearly, while current IT security spending is being driven by medium to large businesses, in the next five years we expect almost half of security spending to be associated with SBs. SBs in Malaysia will gradually come up to speed on security adoption, driven by increasing reliance on the Internet, growth in e-commerce and mounting awareness of the importance of business continuity measures", said Cindy Sim, senior analyst at AMI-Partners.

"As the need to remain in operation 24/7 becomes acute, businesses of all sizes will count the cost of exposing their systems to security threats and the adverse effects of compromising the integrity of its core operations."

These findings emerged from a recent survey of Malaysian SMBs by AMI-Partners where it was further revealed that while basic anti-virus measures have clearly gained a strong foothold in SMBs, adoption of VPNs are still relatively low amongst these businesses. This is particularly apparent amongst PC-enabled SBs where less than 5 per cent are currently using VPNs. Indeed, more than two-fifths of LAN-enabled SBs revealed that they were not using VPNs and had no intention of using this technology, while over a quarter were not aware of this technology at all. Not surprisingly, adoption of network firewalls was far more prevalent among LAN-enabled MBs than among SBs, indicating that these larger businesses were in a stronger position to protect and defend their networks from intruders.

Security solutions such as patch management are expected to be used by the majority of MBs in 2006, however adoption of these solutions is low among Malaysia's small businesses. It is obvious that more initiatives by security vendors will be required to educate time and resource-strapped SMBs about the benefits of VPNs and automated patch management as a key tool in enhancing cyber security.

About the Study

AMI's 2005-2006 Malaysia Small Business Market Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment and 2005-2006 Malaysia Medium Business Market Overview and Comprehensive Market Opportunity Assessment studies highlight these and other major trends in the context of current/planned IT, Internet and communications usage and spending. Products and services covered include established and emerging hardware, software, applications and business process solutions. Based on AMI's annual surveys of SMBs across the Asia/Pacific., the studies track a broad spectrum of issues pertaining to budgets, purchase behaviors, decision influencers, channel preferences, outsourcing, service and support. Also covered are detailed firmographics and critically important technology attitudes and strategic planning priorities. These data point to key opportunities and messaging hot buttons for vendors and service providers seeking to match their offerings to SMB market requirements.

For more information about this study, AMI-Partners, or our global SMB research, please call AMI-Partners at 65-6238-1101, e-mail ask_ami@ami-partners.com, or visit the AMI Web site at www.ami-partners.com.

About AMI-Partners

AMI-Partners specializes in IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services strategy, venture capital, and actionable market intelligence -- focusing on global small and medium business (SMB) enterprises. The AMI-Partners mission is to empower clients for success with the highest quality data, business planning and "go-to-market" solutions. AMI was founded in 1996 under the name of Access Media International (USA), Inc. by Andy Bose, formerly group vice president at IDC. Since its inception, the firm has built a world-class management team, each with ten to fifteen years' experience in IT, telecom, online communications or multimedia.

AMI-Partners has helped shape the go-to-market SMB strategies of more than 150 leading IT, Internet, telecommunications and business services companies over the last ten years. The firm is well known for its IT and Internet adoption-based segmentation of the SMB markets; its annual retainership services based on global SMB tracking surveys in more than 20 countries; and its proprietary database of SMBs and SMB channel partners in the Americas, Europe and Asia-Pacific. The firm invests significantly in collecting survey-based information from several thousand SMBs annually, and is considered the premier source for global SMB trends and analysis.