Securing ICTs May Take $22 Billion By 2019
Anyone who’s been online lately knows that it’s a pretty risky world out there. Between the old standbys like viruses and malware and attempts at identity theft, and the growing issues like botnets, ransomwareand Bitcoin mining viruses, it’s getting to be a dangerous place to be. But beyond the threats the user sees is the wider array of threats that go right after the sources. Things like distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks and the backup such attacks can receive from network time protocol (NTP) servers – all add up to make an even more hazardous environment. Sufficiently hazardous, according to new reports from ABI Research, that the cost of defending against such attacks might ultimately reach $22 billion by 2019 alone.
The report, “Cybersecurity and adware removal Strategies and Risk Management Market Research, ” noted that essentially, there was a combination of factors that drove that huge number. First, there were a variety of firms involved in the figures, ranging from broadcasters and Internet service providers (ISPs) to telecommunications firms and carriers. Indeed, the report notes that these four firms will represent the bulk of where the cash will be coming from to provide security and ad removal to the systems in question. Such firms won’t be the sole source of cash to pay for all that extra security, however, as hardware makers will also have a piece of this action, and so too will governments.
Second, there are a host of issues requiring defending against. As noted previously, there are all the standard threats and some new ones as well, and getting into the threats at the corporate level are even more distressing. Not only are there new threats like NTP amplification for DDoS attacks—reports suggest that some DDoS attacks have reached levels of fully 500 GB/s, which means a whole lot of traffic flooding systems—but there are also threats from the rise of 4G LTE service. Among those concerns are current “threat actors” as such users are called that bring the skills and knowledge gained in more land-based attacks to take on the airwaves. What’s more, there are also issues of things like identity theft of subscribers, as well as fraud in issues of revenue sharing.
There is some help here, as a set of new standardized protocols are making headway, and so too are new algorithms powering security mechanisms. But these still have some ways to go before such are in wide use, and that in turn will help drive some of the costs involved.
One of the great principles in something like this is simple: what one hacker can do, another can undo. The term “hacker” is used generically, of course, and simply reflects those of skill in the field. But it also does a fine job of reflecting the nature of computer security as we know it: every time one advance emerges, an equal and opposite advance tends to emerge in a bid to counter that advance. This constant back-and-forth between those who would behave badly in systems—those “threat actors” as noted previously—and those who would protect systems means a constant need for fresh resources to help fuel the next stage of advancements.
Either way, though, it means a major source of revenue for some astute firms out there, as the drive to break systems is met by the need to protect said systems. That means a lot of opportunity afoot, and many more new developments to come overall.
