Even as security remains a concern for cloud users, research firm IHS says managed security vendors are increasingly delivering their security products via the cloud.

And by 2020, most managed security services will be delivered via the cloud, IHS predicts.

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IHS IHS predicts that by 2020, more managed security vendors will deliver their products via the cloud than on-premises.

Newly released information from the Colorado-based firm estimates that last year on-premises-based managed security products still reigned the day: 54% of these security products were delivered on-premises. IHS says a whopping 46% of security services that are managed by a vendor were delivered via the cloud. By 2020, IHS says those figures will be reversed and cloud-based managed security services will overtake on-premises ones.

IHS says the advent of virtual networking and network function virtualization technologies allow security vendors to more security offer their managed services from the cloud.

“SDN deployments in cloud and hosting environments will help providers build more scalable, flexible and profitable hosted and cloud security services,” said Jeff Wilson, cybersecurity research director for IHS Technology. “The availability of a new generation of virtual CPE services driven by NFV will enable carriers to deliver services to the customer edge on a common hardware platform capable of running virtual machines.”

IHS says the most popular managed security services last year included content security, managed firewalls, DDoS mitigation, intrusion detection and prevention.