by winston » Wed Feb 17, 2016 7:43 am
The Global Cybersecurity Boom
By Sean Brodrick
Cybercrime is booming, which means that the business of providing cybersecurity is also booming.
If it hasn't happened already, this could well be the year that cybercriminals hack into some facet of your electronic identity. In the last year, the number of records exposed in data breaches soared nearly 100%, according to the Identity Theft Resource Center.
On a personal level, the hits just keep on coming.
The IRS just announced that cybercriminals were using stolen information to launch cyberattacks on its e-filing system. The crooks used 101,000 Social Security numbers to access e-file PINs (out of 464,000 attempts). What's that mean? Someone can file your tax return before you do and have a refund sent to them. The IRS says the attacks were stopped before any money was stolen.
1.1 million customers of CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield just had their personal information stolen. Does that sound bad? Here's worse: It's the third major cyberattack on a U.S. health insurer this year. And it's only February!
HSBC had to shut down its personal banking websites due to a relentless wave of cyberattacks.
Time Warner Cable says up to 320,000 customer email passwords were stolen.
Even the nation's top security officials are having their personal data stolen. U.S. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper says his personal email and phone were hacked.
For business owners, the risk is even bigger. Cyberattacks are becoming more frequent and more sophisticated all the time.
JPMorgan Chase has a cybersecurity team of 1,000 staffers and a budget of $250 million per year. It still got hacked. And why not? The banks are where all the money is!
Internationally, some of the sums involved are mind-boggling. Just this month, cyberthieves unleashed a massive attack on a Russia-based forex trading firm. They performed $400 million of unauthorized trades and pocketed the profits. Authorities speculate the hackers likely had co-conspirators and access to "a huge amount of money."
Globally, cyberattacks cost businesses between $400 billion (an insurance estimate) and $500 billion a year (an IT industry estimate).
And individual breaches are getting more expensive. The average cost of a data breach in the U.S. rose from $5.4 million in 2013 to $6.53 million in 2015.
Million-Dollar Breach-Front
Naturally, insurance rates are skyrocketing. Annual cyber-insurance premiums will more than double over the next four years, according to industry estimates.
The Really Scary Vulnerabilities
In previous columns, I have warned that the U.S. power grid could be at risk from cyberterrorists. Well, someone is apparently running training missions in Ukraine.
Investigators say hackers spent six months seeding the computer control system of a Ukrainian power company with malware. To what end? This was the groundwork for a later overnight attack.
A big section of Ukraine went dark until the problem was fixed.
Closer to home, Iranian hackers breached the computer controls for a New York dam in 2013. Could "sleeper" malware be infiltrated throughout important power systems? There's no way to know until and unless the lights go out.
Meanwhile, a recent survey revealed a stunning statistic. More than 82% of 150 IT professionals in the energy, utilities, and oil and gas industries said a cyberattack on operational technology in their organizations could cause physical damage.
What's more, 76% of respondents to the poll said their organizations are likely targets for a cyberattack that would cause physical damage. And 78% said their organizations are potential targets for a nation-state cyberattack.
So this opens the door to nightmare scenarios like this:
You wake up one morning and walk into your kitchen, only to find your programmed coffeemaker isn't working.
Mildly irritated, you notice that the normal messages waiting for you on your phone aren't there. Well, that's kind of a blessing. Then you notice your phone won't access the Internet at all.
You go and check your laptop or desk computer. Nothing. That's weird. Then, in the distance, you hear the fire department's old disaster sirens crank their rusty throats into life. They wail and wail, a sound that sets your nerves on edge.
Your spouse tells you the TV isn't working either. So you get a bright idea. You go out to your car to turn on its radio.
But as you walk outdoors, you see a horrifying site. A massive fireball soars into the sky. The shockwave rattles your windows.
What the heck is going on? You hurry to your car and turn on your radio.
"... a massive explosion at the liquid petroleum storage facility," the breathless radio host says. "But reports are coming in of catastrophic failures at important energy infrastructure across the country. Whatever can go wrong has gone wrong."
A cold chill goes down your spine as you remember the nuclear power plant across the state. Could that fail? You don't want to be around to find out. You're going to be smart and grab your family and get out of there.
You pile into the car and try to start it. The engine turns over and starts running! Hooray! But then the car fits and sputters like its electronic "brain" is possessed.
You suddenly realize you aren't driving anywhere.
Could such a nightmare scenario happen? If someone with a lot of time, energy and resources got really ticked off at us... who knows?
If one thing is for certain, the growing onslaught of cyberattacks is good news for the companies who are in the business of providing cybersecurity.
Merger Mania Is Happening
Cyber is one of the hottest spaces in tech right now. And cash-rich companies are gobbling up their peers on the cheap.
AVG Technologies, which has 200 million active users of its security systems, recently acquired Privax, a leading global provider of desktop and mobile privacy services.
Baidu, the Chinese Web giant, gobbled up online security startup Anquanbao.
Blue Coat Systems, a market leader in enterprise security, acquired Perspecsys, a leader in enterprise cloud data protection solutions.
Check Point Software Technologies, the largest pure-play security vendor globally, bought Lacoon Mobile Security. Lacoon leads the industry in mobile device security.
Cisco Systems acquired OpenDNS, a privately held security company based in San Francisco. OpenDNS provides advanced threat protection for any device, anywhere, anytime.
There are even more mergers in the works. Microsoft signed a letter of intent to acquire Israeli cloud security firm Adallom for $320 million. (Israel is the nexus of the cybersecurity industry, by the way.)
The point is, the business of cybersecurity is booming... And it will continue to boom for a long, long while. Perhaps even more compelling, the business of cybersecurity is a global one. It isn't just an "America thing."
Pay close attention to trends in cybersecurity and to the companies around the world leading the way in combating cyberattacks. Over the next several years, fortunes will be made by investing in this rapidly growing sector.
Source: The Non-Dollar Report
It's all about "how much you made when you were right" & "how little you lost when you were wrong"