China's IT security market will grow 20.9 percent annually over the next five years, an American research company said on Tuesday.

The market sales would reach 976.5 million U.S. dollars in 2010, the  International Data Corporation (IDC) said in a report.

More than 27 percent of companies in the Asia-Pacific region (excluding Japan) have not made any preparations for emergency security, said IDC.

But there are more and more cases in which companies are seriously affected by security problems, according to the report.

IDC predicted that the security software market in the Asia-Pacific region and China's mainland would grow 15.7 percent and 22.6 percent  respectively every year in the next five years.

The IT security market including security software, hardware and services will also see fast growth, it said.

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