Channel partners who sell security services take note: One segment in particular – threat intelligence – is poised for some nice growth over the next several years.

A new report published by MarketsandMarkets predicts the threat intelligence security market to nearly double, from a little more than $3 billion this year to almost $5.9 billion by 2020. That’s a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.3 percent.

Threat intelligence refers to a business’ ability to analyze and understand information related to all types of cyber attacks. It’s no secret that these types of attacks are increasing, and businesses are increasingly spending on their network security – leading to substantial growth in this market in the last five to six years.

The number of cyber attacks has grown by almost 50 percent since 2010, the report says, resulting in an increase in enterprise security spending. Losses incurred due to these attacks can be very disruptive and cost far more than the money spent to secure a network. Businesses also are looking for services that can predict attacks and respond to them in real time.

Furthermore, bring-your-own-device (BYOD) is changing the security needs of organizations. They need to secure devices in the office and when they are outside of the office network.

MarketsandMarkets identifies IBM, Symantec, McAfee, Trend Micro and Dell SecureWorks as the major vendors in threat intelligence, but a number of niche players are challenging them with lower prices.

Follow senior online managing editor Craig Galbraith on Twitter.