Utility Investment reports that a new Pike Research study, Industrial Control System Security, estimates the ICS Security market to total $4.1B between 2011-2018. Hooray, we are all going to be rich.
The article nor the Pike Research site provides detail on how this number was arrived at — you need to purchase a subscription to their service for $3,800 to access the full report. The Executive Summary is available after free registration, and it showed revenue in 2011 at $300M and then ramping up to $700M in 2018.
The prediction of a little better than doubling revenue in 7 years is reasonable and in fact is probably conservative, but the starting number of $300M is not. In the report they list the major vendors today, such as Byres Security, Nitro Security, Waterfall, and mainstream vendors such as IBM and Symantec. It doesn’t add up to $300M this year unless you start to add it non ICS security revenue from utilities.
If you look at the chart in the free executive summary, it seems more reasonable yet also a bit odder. It shows the North American market at $100M in 2011, meaning the rest of world is $200M. And it shows a slight decline in the North American revenue numbers from 2011 to 2018. The rest of world number of $200M in 2011 is the biggest error in my opinion.
The Executive Summary emphasizes the smart grid and this appears to actually be Pike’s estimate for the electric sector, despite the generic title. Oil/gas ICS, chemical and other manufacturing, water, transportation all are absent from at least the table of contents and executive summary. Large petrochemical companies are some of the most active participants in ICS security. Perhaps since Pike Research focuses on the Utility Sector it is implied that these numbers are only for that sector.
I’m a regular reader and retweeter of the Pike Research Blog. They find some real gems of news and have interesting analysis of the smart grid beyond AMI. Things like EV, storage, HAN that is hard to find elsewhere. Their security information and analysis is not up to that standard in my opinion.
Image by wwarby