Redwood City, Calif. – September 13, 2026 -- The worldwide Network Security market reached nearly $8 billion in the second quarter of 2026, up 18 percent year-over-year, according to a new report from Dell'Oro Group. Firewall growth accelerated sharply, climbing from 9 percent in the first quarter to 18 percent in the second, as enterprises pushed ahead with lifecycle refreshes, capacity additions, branch modernization, and virtual enforcement deployments.
Firewall refresh cycle doubles in pace within a single quarter
Mauricio Sanchez, Sr. Director for Enterprise Security and Networking at Dell'Oro Group, said firewall spending reaccelerated because customers had concrete drivers: aging infrastructure, higher throughput requirements, branch redesigns, and expanding private-cloud workloads. He characterized the activity as a targeted modernization cycle rather than an estate-wide replacement wave.
AI security needs push spending beyond hardware refresh
Sanchez said enterprises are extending cloud-delivered security into sensitive-data controls while elevating the application front door into a more strategic enforcement point for APIs, bots, and automated traffic. Those motions are broadening security budgets beyond the firewall segment and keeping growth distributed across the market.
WAF demand shifts from web protection to API and bot defense
Web Application Firewall demand continued to move from traditional web protection toward APIs, bots, automated traffic, and application-front-door consolidation, strengthening WAF's role as a control point rather than a standalone rule-set product.
ADC segment improves on F5's BIG-IP migration cycle
Application Delivery Controllers benefited from installed-base modernization and capacity expansion, led primarily by F5's BIG-IP migration cycle. Dell'Oro Group noted the improvement remained concentrated and should not be read as a uniform recovery across all ADC suppliers.
Data security emerges as clearest growth layer within SSE
Within Security Service Edge, enterprises continued expanding cloud-delivered policy across users, devices, SaaS applications, and private applications through the core SSE segment. Data Security stood out as the clearest expansion layer in the extended SSE category, as customers attached sensitive-data controls and AI-governance functions to existing SSE relationships, though vendors monetized these capabilities through varying packaging models.