Engelhardt said that the take up of SaaS and hosted mail security was now growing about 35 per cent each year, while demand for typical software appliances was "growing sub 10 per cent".

MessageLabs senior director Marketing APJ, Andrew Antal, said that Asia enterprises seem more complacent and accepting of spam and viruses, compared to their counterparts in other regions.

"Enterprises in the US and Europe simply do not tolerate cyber attacks," Antal said. "I would expect that over the next two to three years, the markets in Asia will take on a higher level of security and not accept spam nor viruses coming in to their organization.

"Asia's increased vulnerability probably relates to the size of the IT departments and their ability to actually focus on security. My feeling is that Singapore is probably 12 -- 24 months behind in terms of SaaS adoption.