According to a new market report published by Transparency Market Research (www.transparencymarketing.com), a global market intelligence company, the web content filtering market was valued at US#1,230.9 million in 2012 and is expected to reach $2,579.6 million by 2019, growing at a CAGR [compound annual growth rate] of 11.3% from 2013 to 2019.

With exponential growth of the Internet, there has been increase in number of cyber attacks and cyber threats. Therefore, due to security reasons, the demand for content filtering solutions in business organizations and government agencies is expected to rise over the forecast period from 2013 to 2019, according to Transparency Research.

The ever changing government regulations coupled with growing desire to manage the Internet bandwidth consumption wisely have collectively fueled market momentum, adds the research group. The demand for web content filtering solutions is also fueled by growing corporate concerns over legal liability and employee productivity.

In 2012, URL filtering was the major web content filtering technique employed across the globe accounting for 33.6% of the total market. Although it is expected to remain the major filtering technique, file type filtering is expected to outpace URL filtering over the forecast period. This is majorly attributed to its growing demand in established markets like the U.S and Europe on the account of its superior properties that allow employees to access work-related sections of websites while blocking the non-work related files.

Growing concerns over email-threats, resulting in data loss as well as leaking of confidential data has compelled business organizations and government agencies to implement e-mail filters on large scale. In terms of end-use, business organizations segment held the highest market share, and was valued at US$441.9 million in 2012.  

It is expected to maintain its dominance over the forecast period, growing at a CAGR of 10.3%. However, growing need to manage bandwidth consumption and restrict students from accessing inappropriate content on the web is expected to fuel the adoption rate of web content filtering solutions in schools and institutions.

North America was the largest web content filtering market in 2012, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific is expected to be the fastest growing web content filtering market over the forecast period from 2013 to 2019, growing at a CAGR of 14%, says Transparency Research.