Cybersecurity firms that diagnose and protect against hackers are cashing in on Wall Street as more high profile breaches are fueling fear among corporate executives.
It is expected that global spending on cybersecurity will rise $77 billion. As a gauge for the industries growth the first ever exchange-traded fund for cybersecurity grew 17 percent in February after coming online at the end of last year. Daniel Ives, an analyst with FBR Capital Markets thinks that, “cyber is a once-in-a-multi-decade investment opportunity because you only have about 8 percent of enterprises and governments worldwide that have upgraded to next-generation security.”
In addition to large scale data breaches, actions in Washington are driving interest “before President Obama signed an executive order on cyber threat sharing, the HACK fund was reportedly up 4.7 percent.”
According to Ives the industry is going through a “huge paradigm shift. Protecting user data has become a Herculean task. … There is so much riding on protecting the network. And even though there has been a lot of hype, CIOs have really underspent on cybersecurity in the last five years.”