Buyers Seek Consistent AI Guardrails Across Networked Users, Applications, Clouds, and Branches
REDWOOD CITY, Calif. – June 9, 2026 – According to a recently published report from Dell’Oro Group, the trusted source for market information about the telecommunications, security, networks, and data center industries, the worldwide Network Security market eclipsed $7 B in 1Q 2026, up 14 percent year-over-year (Y/Y). Growth remained resilient, but the stronger market signal was policy-plane expansion as enterprises increased investment in architectures that coordinate enforcement across users, applications, clouds, branches, and customer-controlled environments. That shift is becoming more urgent in the agentic AI era, where security teams must govern human users, non-human actors, applications, APIs, and distributed infrastructure through fewer policy planes.
“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. “SSE’s 22 percent growth, WAF’s 20 percent growth, and Firewalls’ 9 percent growth show that buyers are adding cloud-delivered access, application front-door controls, and virtual enforcement alongside the physical appliance base to get enterprises ready for the agentic AI era.”
Additional highlights from the 1Q 2026 Network Security Quarterly Report:
- Firewalls: Physical appliances remained essential for throughput, segmentation, and local enforcement, but the stronger architectural signal came from virtual and hybrid enforcement models that extend firewall policy across distributed environments.
- Security Service Edge (SSE): Cloud-delivered access remained central to policy-plane consolidation as buyers looked to apply consistent controls across users, devices, SaaS applications, private applications, and emerging AI usage patterns.
- Application Delivery Controllers (ADC): Application delivery modernization continued to matter because agentic and AI-adjacent workflows increase the need for resilient application performance, automation, and customer-controlled deployment options.
- Web Application Firewalls (WAF): Application front-door controls gained strategic importance as enterprises worked to govern API exposure, bot activity, automated traffic, and AI-adjacent application behavior without slowing application delivery.
The Dell’Oro Group Network Security Report includes manufacturers’ revenue covering the ADC, Firewall, SSE, traditional SWG appliances, and WAF product segments. Moreover, SSEs are further broken down across four primary functions: CASB, FWaaS, SWG, and ZTNA. The report also splits many segments by form factor: physical, virtual, and SaaS. To purchase this report, please contact us at dgsales@delloro.com.
Dell’Oro Group is a market research firm that specializes in strategic competitive analysis in the telecommunications, security, enterprise networks, and data center markets. Our firm provides in-depth quantitative data and qualitative analysis to facilitate critical, fact-based business decisions. For more information, contact Dell’Oro Group at +1.650.622.9400 or visit https://www.delloro.com.
# # #
