The information security industry is growing thanks to cyber attacks

The capitalization of companies that have been trading on HACK stock exchange for the past half of 2018 increased by 18%. HACK includes holdings that provide popular solutions for information security: Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, FireEye, Juniper Networks, CyberArk Software, Symantec and Cisco.

Since July 2018, shares of Prime Cyber ​​Security ETF have risen in price by 31%. The increase in revenues and the demand for services of specialists in cyber security in 2017 caused an increased interest of investors in such companies. The growth of funds accelerated, when in February 2018 industry leaders reported about revenues for the past year.

The demand for security experts is provoked by hacker attacks

Experts of the American business television channel CNBC associate this behavior of investors with the leakage of personal data that occurred in 2017. The decisive impact on the market had a hacking attack on the credit bureau Equifax, which became known in September 2017. Criminals gained access to 143 million clients of the bureau.

The cost of data protection will increase

The critical importance of cyber security was raised in 2016, when the company Yahoo discovered a hacking of more than a billion accounts. The risk of being a victim of hackers has stimulated the business to increase costs on protection of customers' personal data. In mid-2017, the growth of this market accelerated: more companies are starting to store data in cloud networks and are trying to protect them.

The research and consulting company Gartner predicts that in 2018, cybersecurity costs will be 7% higher than in the past. The estimated damage from cybercrime, according to Gartner, will continue to grow and by 2021 will be $ 6 trillion. This is twice as big as 3 years ago.