Part Four
CYBERSECURITY Ventures predicts that there will be 6 billion Internet users by 2022 (75 percent of the projected world population of 8 billion)—and more than 7.5 billion Internet users by 2030 (90 percent of the projected world population of 8.5 billion, 6 years of age and older).
There were nearly 4 billion Internet users in 2018 (nearly half of the world’s population of 7.7 billion), up from 2 billion in 2015.
Gartner forecasts that more than half a billion wearable devices will be sold worldwide in 2021, up from roughly 310 million in 2017.
Hundreds of thousands—and possibly millions—of people can be hacked now via their wirelessly connected and digitally monitored implantable medical devices (IMDs)—which include cardioverter defibrillators (ICD), pacemakers, deep brain neurostimulators, insulin pumps, ear tubes and more.
For the most recent year reported by the FBI, the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) received nearly 50,000 complaints from victims over the age of 60 with adjusted losses in excess of $342 million—which leads all age groups.
The global market for connected cars is expected to grow by 270 percent by 2022—and more than 125 million passenger cars with embedded connectivity are forecast to ship worldwide between 2018 and 2022. This means most drivers will be online and susceptible to auto (cyber) intrusions by 2022, regardless of whether they consider themselves to be “online” or not.
Health-care industry
Hospitals are more vulnerable than any other type of organization in 2019. Outdated systems, lack of experienced cyber personnel, highly valuable data, and added incentive to pay ransoms in order to regain patient data are attracting cybercriminals to the healthcare market.
Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that the health-care industry will spend more than $65 billion cumulatively on cyber-security products and services from 2017 to 2021. Ransomware attacks on health-care organizations are predicted to quadruple between 2017 and 2020, and will grow to five times by 2021.
Personal health information is 50 times more valuable on the black market than financial information, and stolen patient health records can fetch upward of $60 per record (which is 10-20 times more than credit-card information).
Cybersecurity Ventures also predicts that health care will suffer two to three times more cyber attacks in 2019 than the average amount for other industries. Woefully inadequate security practices, weak and shared passwords, plus vulnerabilities in code, exposes hospitals to perpetrators intent on hacking treasure troves of patient data.
Cyber-security economy
IN 2004, the global cyber-security market was worth $3.5 billion— and in 2017 it was worth more than $120 billion. The cyber-security market grew by roughly 35 times during that 13-year period—prior to the latest market sizing by Cybersecurity Ventures for the five-year period 2017 to 2021.
Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that global spending on
cyber-
security products and services will exceed $1 trillion cumulatively over the
five-year period from 2017 to 2021—and the cyber-security market will continue
growing by 12-15 percent year-over-year through 2021.
Worldwide spending on information security (a subset of the broader cyber-security market) products and services exceeded $114 billion in 2018, an increase of 12.4 percent from last year, according to the latest forecast from Gartner Inc. For 2019, they forecast the market to grow to $124 billion, and $170.4 billion in 2022.
Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that the global blockchain market will exceed $40 billion by 2025. Results from one indicate institutional investors from hedge funds, pension funds, and private equity believed that blockchain technology will have the biggest impact on health care, financial services and banking. The study reveals that 39 percent of the investors believe blockchain will do to banking what the Internet did to media.
In 2019, Cybersecurity Ventures expects that Fortune 500 and Global 2000 chief information security officers (CISOs) will reduce the number of point security products/solutions in use at their corporations by 15 percent to 18 percent.
Total venture capital funding in the cyber-security space totaled more than $5 billion in 2018, up 20 percent from nearly $4.5 billion in 2017. In 2018, the total amount of funding for Israeli cyber-security companies grew 22 percent year-over-year to more than $1 billion. According to these figures, Israel, the world’s second-largest exporter of cyber technology (behind the US), accounted for roughly 20 percent of all cyber-security funding.
Based on venture capital dollars invested in cyber security, the top 4 countries are (in this order): the US, Israel, the UK and Canada.
Sixty eight percent of US businesses have not purchased any form of cyber liability or data-breach coverage, showing that businesses are not adopting cyber insurance at a rate that matches the risks they face, according to a Cisco paper. However, a majority of the 25 most populous US cities now have cyberinsurance for more or are looking into buying it, according to a Wall Street Journal survey.
Legislation such as 2018’s EU General Data Protection Regulation is helping drive the demand for cyber insurance as health care providers, financial services firms, and companies in all industries are tasked with keeping user data safe—and recovering from data breaches and ransomware attacks. Market forecasts for cyber insurance policies range from $14 billion by 2022 to $20 billion by 2025, up from less than $1.5 billion in 2016.
Singapore announced the launch of the world’s first commercial cyber risk pool, a facility for providing cyber insurance to corporate buyers, as cyber attacks in the Asia-Pacific region become more pervasive. The pool will commit up to $1 billion in risk capacity and will be backed by capital from traditional insurance and insurance-linked securities markets to provide bespoke coverage.
The $100-million Hull McKnight Georgia Cyber Center for Innovation and Training in Augusta, Georgia, marks the single largest investment in a cyber-security facility by a state government.
The 2019 US President’s budget includes $15 billion for cyber security, a $583.4-million (4.1-percent) increase over 2018. The Department of Defense was the largest contributor to the budget. The DoD reported $8.5 billion in cyber-security funding in 2019, a $340-million (4.2-percent) increase over 2018.
A 2018 report estimates that energy companies, ranging from drillers to pipeline operators to utilities, invest less than 0.2 percent of their revenue in cyber security—while the number of hacker groups targeting the energy sector is soaring. Energy networks are vulnerable to cyber attacks, and hackers can cause massive power outages, placing national defense infrastructures at risk and endangering millions of citizens.
Estimates placing at least 85 percent of all business assets in digital form, a massive increase of cybercrime, and, into cyber insurance coverage has led Cybersecurity Ventures to predict that future stock prices of publicly traded companies—and valuations of most start-ups and emerging enterprises seeking venture capital—will be influenced by market and investor perceptions of how secure a business’ information systems, data and employees are.
To be continued
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.