Strong demand will drive the global content security gateway market to sales of almost $352m in the first quarter of 2007, according to new research.

The latest report from Infonetics Research describes the sector as "buoyant".

The presence of start-ups and security giants like Symantec, McAfee and Secure Computing, combined with Cisco's " flashy entry into the market", will deliver significant worldwide revenue growth between 2006 and 2007.

Infonetics estimates that the market will hit $2.5bn by 2010, at a five-year compound annual growth rate of 22 per cent.

"In 2007, we are starting to see some convergence of single-function platforms into several larger categories, including web security, messaging security and antivirus/spyware gateways," said Jeff Wilson, principal analyst at Infonetics.

"Vendors are also building products that handle all three broad categories of functionality."

Worldwide content security appliance revenue rose nine per cent from the fourth quarter of 2006 to the first quarter of 2007. Content security software revenues rose by the same percentage over the period.

North America accounted for 52 per cent of content security gateway revenue in the first quarter of 2007, followed by Asia Pacific (25 per cent), EMEA (21 per cent) and Central America/Latin America (three per cent).