If you thought the Internet of Things was set to take off, there might be an even bigger opportunity brewing for partners in cloud security.

A new report from research and consulting firm Mordor Intelligence predicts that the global cloud security market will leap in value from slightly more than $2.1 billion in 2014 to more than $16.1 billion by 2020. That’s a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of nearly 40 percent.

This report focuses on small and medium businesses (SMBs), which are making a major push into cloud technology thanks to the lower cost of ownership. But with that push comes concern over data breaches that can result in heavy losses – a concern that will send the cloud-security market soaring.

As the market matures, cloud security will become an integral part of cloud infrastructure. That will encourage cloud-service providers to partner with security-solution providers to help them remain competitive, Mordor says.

Email security was the largest segment of the cloud security market in 2014. Email, combined with encryption, accounted for more than 53 percent of the overall market last year. Network security is the fastest growing segment; it’s expected to dominate this market by the end of 2020. Banking and finance will be the leading vertical, followed by telecom and IT.

The report includes a review of major players such as CA Technologies, Trend Micro, Symantec, McAfee, IBM and Cipher Cloud. The other key players in the market, Mordor says, include Okta, Panda Security, Microsoft, Cisco, Websense, Fortinet, Barracuda Networks, Porticor, Clearswift, Juniper, Voltage Security, Perspecsys and Vaultive.

North America dominates cloud security by region, followed by Europe and Asia Pacific.

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