Dell’Oro Group Finds Worldwide Network Security Market Exceeds $7 Billion in 1Q 2026

Dell’Oro Group reports the worldwide Network Security market exceeded $7 billion in 1Q 2026, rising 14% year-over-year as enterprises expanded policy-plane enforcement across users, applications, clouds, branches, and customer-controlled environments.

Market Overview

The firm said the market “eclipsed $7 B in 1Q 2026, up 14 percent year-over-year (Y/Y).” It added that growth remained steady while policy-plane expansion gained attention in enterprise security architecture planning.

Policy-Plane Consolidation and Agentic AI

Dell’Oro Group tied enterprise demand to the “agentic AI era,” describing a need to govern “human users, non-human actors, applications, APIs, and distributed infrastructure through fewer policy planes.” The report frames this as a shift toward coordinated enforcement across multiple parts of the network.

“Physical firewalls and select point products are not going away, but the agentic AI era is raising the value of software and cloud-based network security platforms that reduce policy sprawl across users, applications, clouds, and branches,” said Mauricio Sanchez, Sr. Director, Enterprise Security and Networking at Dell’Oro Group.

Component Performance

The report cites growth rates for multiple categories, including “SSE’s 22 percent growth, WAF’s 20 percent growth, and Firewalls’ 9 percent growth.” It links those figures to buyer additions of cloud-delivered access, application front-door controls, and virtual enforcement alongside appliance deployments.

Product and Architecture Highlights

For Firewalls, Dell’Oro Group said physical appliances remained used for “throughput” and “segmentation,” while “virtual and hybrid enforcement models” extend firewall policy across distributed environments.

For Security Service Edge (SSE), it said cloud-delivered access remained central to applying consistent controls across users, devices, SaaS applications, private applications, and emerging AI usage patterns. For Application Delivery Controllers (ADC), the report said modernization continued to matter as workflows increase needs for “resilient application performance” and “automation,” including customer-controlled deployment options.

For Web Application Firewalls (WAF), Dell’Oro Group reported application front-door controls gained importance for governing “API exposure, bot activity, automated traffic, and AI-adjacent application behavior” without slowing delivery.

Report Scope

Dell’Oro Group said the Network Security Report includes manufacturers’ revenue for ADC, Firewall, SSE, traditional SWG appliances, and WAF segments. It said SSE segments also include CASB, FWaaS, SWG, and ZTNA, and many segments split by form factor into physical, virtual, and SaaS.

This Analyst Signals brief reflects a neutral, fact-based summary of the original research note.