Analyst Profile
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Christian A. Christiansen
Program Vice President, Security Products and Services

Team: Directions 2012 (U.S) Participating Analysts
Infrastructure
Security and Business Continuity
Security Products and Services
Virtualization
Worldwide Software Research
Chris Christiansen is the Program Vice President for IDC's Security Products and Services group. He conducts in-depth primary research and provides insight and analysis on a variety of evolving security markets. Mr. Christiansen delivers critical market intelligence to technology vendors, IT professionals, and the financial community. His areas of expertise include, but are not limited to: firewalls, encryption, anti-virus software, 3A (authentication, administration, and authorization) software, intrusion detection and vulnerability assessment, and security management.

Prior to his current position with IDC, Mr. Christiansen was director of IDC's Asset Management service. In this position, he managed the group's research activities, analyzed end-user business issues, and developed IDC’s Cost-of-Ownership model. Mr. Christiansen also worked for IDC’s Worldwide Commercial Systems group, where he followed mid-range vendors such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Siemens, Stratus, and Unisys.

Before joining IDC, Mr. Christiansen founded Meta Group’s Midrange Service and consulted extensively with large users on open systems, Internet access, storage management, server consolidation, vendor negotiation, database selection, maintenance audits, software asset management, and systems/network management. Prior to Meta Group, he held positions with Data General, Wang Laboratories, Yankee Group, and Creative Strategies International.

Mr. Christiansen is widely traveled and quoted. He speaks at industry conferences in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, Africa, and Asia/Pacific. Mr. Christiansen’s background of end-user consulting, vendor research, and competitive analysis reinforces his constant emphasis on the customer value.

Popular press and trade publications frequently call on Mr. Christiansen. His comments appear in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, BusinessWeek, Boston Globe, San Francisco Examiner, San Jose Mercury, Washington Post, Fortune, ComputerWorld, Network World, InfoWorld, and others. His writings and analysis are seen overseas in Denmark, England, France, Italy, Japan, Latin America, and Australia. His bulletins are translated into Danish, Japanese, Italian, French, German, and Portuguese.

Mr. Christiansen holds a Masters of Science degree from Boston University and a Bachelors degree from Millersville University.

IDC Link


AT&T Enhances Application Security Consulting as Businesses Seek Security "Trusted Partners"
Chris Liebert, Christian A. Christiansen, Curtis Price
Mar 2012 - Doc # lcUS23332312      IDC Link
Organizations worldwide require Web and mobile applications and infrastructure applications to run their businesses, often over distributed networks. The uptime of those applications then becomes critical to a business's bottom line. Securi ...

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DoS and DDoS Emerge from the Shadows: An Old Foe Presents New Challenges
Christian A. Christiansen, John Grady, Christina Richmond
May 2013 - Doc # WC20130418      Event Proceeding
This IDC Web Conference discusses how denial-of-service (DoS) and distributed-denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks are impacting enterprise infrastructures as well as the market for DoS and DDoS mitigation solutions. For almost a decade, den ...
U.S. Mobile Security Survey, 2013
Phil Hochmuth, Charles J. Kolodgy, John Grady, Sally Hudson, Christian A. Christiansen
Apr 2013 - Doc # 240598      Survey
This IDC study discusses the findings from the U.S. Mobile Security Survey regarding threats posed by mobile devices and apps among BYOD and IT-controlled firms.: "Mobile devices and apps pose a great security risk in the eye ...
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Frequently Asked Questions


How will 2001 economic downturn affect the Security Software market worldwide?
We expect the market to continue maturing, but we are not predicting a radical downturn.

What are the differences between North America, Europe, and other international regions?
We expect Asia/Pacific to grow the most quickly followed by Europe and North America.

What security technologies are growing and maturing?
The Authorization market continues growing at high double digit rates, but anti-virus is clearly slowing.

How will security appliances affect the software market?
Appliances represent a new licensing opportunity for established vendors in the firewall/VPN market. It offers even mature products a new market opportunity. Still, appliance market growth far outpaces traditional security software sales.

Will new security markets emerge around Privacy, Web Servers, Applications Servers, Wireless, and Security Management?
For a relatively revenue-less market, the plethora of Web server security software products is quite amazing. While some products will end up as features, we see a slew of new market developing in this area.

 
Appearances

DoS and DDoS Emerge from the Shadows: An Old Foe Presents New Challenges
Framingham, MA United States
April 18, 2013

IDC at RSA 2013
San Francisco, CA United States
February 27, 2013

IDC - 2013 Chief Information Security Officer (CISO) Predictions: Securing the Expanding Walls of an Enterprise
Framingham, MA United States
January 09, 2013

Predictions 2013: The Evolving Security Ecosystem
Framingham, MA United States
December 20, 2012

Assessing the Opportunity for Mobile Enterprise Security
Framingham, MA United States
April 12, 2012

Security Predictions 2012: Big Data, Social, Mobile, and Cloud Embolden the Security Community
Framingham, MA United States
December 22, 2011