Network security market growing internationally as Cisco leads

The network security market grew by a small but significant percentage during the fourth quarter of 2011, especially in Europe, according to global market research firm Canalys.

Despite Eurozone woes and some declines in Southern Europe's market share, Western Europe's piece of the international market share grew by 9.7 percent year-over-year.

Russia and emerging markets in Central and Eastern Europe saw an even bigger increase to 14.9 percent overall, while the Middle East and Africa declined by 0.3 percent.

Canalys researchers noted that's rather impressive considering unstable political and economic climates throughout those regions, causing projects and jobs to be put on hold.

Specifically, more organizations in these regions are investing to protect against denial-of-service attacks. At the same time, these businesses are, unsurprisingly, trying to manage more and more personal devices creeping into the workplace.

Cisco, in particular, is the leading vendor within Europe, Africa and the Middle East by accounting for more than a quarter of all end-user shipments during Q4 2011, worth approximately $179 million.

Canalys analyst Nushin Hernandez remarked in the report that Cisco has maintained the lead thanks to "securing key high-end deals coupled with aggressive pricing."

Following Cisco in the top five enterprise network security vendors in these regions are Check Point, Juniper Networks, Fortinet and IBM, respectively. Juniper and IBM were the only vendors in the top five that saw losses in their portions of the market share.