Research firm, Gartner, has released a new study which predicts good news for new security software sales. The current upward trend is expected to continue as billions of dollars in sales are anticipated. Even during an economic downturn, last year's record sales showed the relative value companies continue to place on locking down their data networks.

Our sister site, CIOUpdate, reports:

Worldwide security software sales are expected to surge another 11 percent this year, a fact that should come as no surprise to enterprise IT administrators wrestling daily with a constant barrage of new and more sophisticated pieces of malware.

Gartner's latest forecast calls for new security software sales in excess of $16.5 billion, up from $14.8 billion last year. And last year's record haul represented only a 7 percent increase from the prior year, a testament to both the impact the macroeconomic downturn had on most enterprise IT budgets and the relative value companies continue to place on locking down their data networks.

"Most segments of the security software market will continue to grow over the next few years, although a significant degree of variation is expected between the more-established and less-mature technologies," Gartner analyst Ruggero Contu said in the report. "Overall, security will remain one of the fastest-growing areas within the enterprise software market."

Read the full story at CIOUpdate.com.