Optical Encryption Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2022 - 2027)

The optical encryption market is expected to register a CAGR of 8.1%, during the forecast period (2021-2026).

Key Highlights

• Owing to the growth of internet devices and the volume of data generated over the course of years, data security has become not just a single feature but rather an increasingly important set of technologies to safeguard the data that is sent across both private and public networks.
• The effective security of the network relies on multiple layers of defense and not just at the core and edge of the network, but also along the network path, while most the organizations focus much of their security at user and application end, which is essential to protect the in-flight data as it travels across the network.
• Although traditional in-flight data encryption solutions have been around for a while, they suffered a number of challenges to cope with current network infrastructures, such as increased latency, delay in management, and hardware compatibility, thereby, adding up to the complexity in maintaining the network.
• Also, the increase of in-flight data to be carried at longer distances across waves, including 10 G, 40 G, and 100 G, among others, has initiated the adoption of optical encryption to protect high-capacity that is be traveled across countries. For instance, in January 2020, BGN Technology, a transfer company of the Ben-Gurion University of Negev, introduced all-optical stealth encryption technology that claimed to be significantly more secure and private for the network transmission of the data center and cloud computing. The solution is said to employ the phase mask that enables it to change the phase of each wavelength.
• Furthermore, the industry-wide adoption of cloud computing application for hosting, processing, and data storage led to an increase in the frequency of sensitive data transferred across the network, which added costs associated with data loss. Increase of data breaches fosters the growth of the market. For instance, 2019 accounted for some of the breaches from major players in various industries, including Zynga, Facebook, Adobe Creative Cloud, and Capital One Financial Corporation, and it reported as much as a leak of 218 million data records.
• Additionally, Industry 4.0 initiatives, such as smart city intiatioas and IoT adoption, and the increasing dependency of organizations, including data center and miltary on the internet network, and the frequency and sophistication of cyberattacks are on the rise, which further elevates the growth the market.

Key Market Trends

Layer 1 Encryption is Expected to Witness High Growth

• The fiber optic communication infrastructure was considered to be highly secured than traditional copper infrastructure, as it did not radiate and allowed more resilient tapping. However, the recent trend of cyber-attacks over the years has shown that even fiber optics cables are vulnerable for the attackers to tap in.
• To counter such attacks, organizations, including financial, government institutions, service providers, and data centers, have shown particular interest in increasing the security of data over OTN links. Additionally, few industries have made instances, such as confidentially, authentication, and integrity of data mandatory.
• The encryption of data at Layer 1 with Optical Transport Network ( OTN) provides the network operators the option to secure traffic in OTN efficiently and flexibly, without it affecting the service performance.
• Securing the optical layer with OTN encryption helps companies deliver maximum deployment, which can be rolled into other existing L1 transport network and service models, and provide the means to support new network architectures and revenue-generating services.
• Furthermore, encrypting traffic at the OTN layer enables scalability and flexibility to offer the G.709 standard, i.e., encryption from 1.25 Gb/s to 100 Gb/s, and after multiplexing, it allows 100 G OTN signals. This allows the network providers to offer bulk encryption service models, such as pay-as-you-grow services. Additionally, it helps the end users to start small and grow their lines as per the needs, thereby, minimizing the barrier of adoption of the market and fostering the growth of the market.

Asia-Pacific is Estimated to Grow the Fastest Among all Regions

• The Asia-Pacific region is expected to hold a prominent share of the market, owing to the extent of networks, such as 5G, telecom, consumer electronics, data centers, and smart city initiatives in China, Malaysia, Thailand, India, and other developing countries in the region.
• Despite the recent outbreak of COVID-19, China has maintained its position as a 5G wireless network leader, as it has installed 160,000 5G stations spread across more than 50 cities, as telecom vendors aim to expand their standalone 5G coverage and capacity. Both the 5G networks and Big Data center installments remain the core elements of the country's digital infrastructure.
• Also, emerging countries in the region, such as India, are leveraging their IT industries to install public cloud-based data centers. As India is home for large private-sector employers, it has widely adopted data centers to meet the requirements for faster and secure transfer of data, which propels the market growth.

Competitive Landscape

The market is moderately fragmented due to the presence of players, like Nokia Corporation, Juniper Networks Inc., and Cisco Sytems Inc., which play a vital role in upscaling the security of enterprises, leading the orientation of the market to a highly competitive environment.

• April 2020 - Ciena Corporation announced that Tasmanian Network Pty Limited selected Ciena's coherent optical solution to address the rising bandwidth needs from the IoT, data center, and 5G services, to serve its end users across the states with mission-critical tasks. The company's Wavelogic Ai coherent optical solution is said to provide TasNetwork with 42-24 enhanced capacity and efficiency in the network.
• May 2019 - ADVA announced that Colt Technology Services selected the company to deploy ADVA FSP 150 with ConnectGuard security technology, in order to provide it the Ethernet Line Encryption service. The solution provides end-to-end data protection for low-latency and high-speed performance of up to 10 Gbit/s and enables enterprises with sensitive data against security threats.

Additional Benefits:

• The market estimate (ME) sheet in Excel format
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