Cyber security market, IT security market for founders and startups
Prof. Norbert Pohlmann (Institute for Internet Security)
Digitization (information technology (IT), the Internet) is the engine and basis for the well-being of our modern and global information and knowledge society. Digitalization opens up enormous growth opportunities across all industries and company sizes and leads to ever better processes that increase efficiency and reduce costs. The digitization process is accelerating at all levels and the value added share of IT in all products and solutions is getting bigger.
The risks of digitization are constantly increasing
However, we must also note that since IT started, cyber security problems are getting bigger and not getting smaller every year. An important finding is that today’s IT architectures for our end devices, servers, network components and central IT services are not designed and built securely enough to successfully counter attacks by intelligent hackers. The large number of local and central applications, the different accesses to the Internet, the mass of IT systems, etc. make the complexity of IT ever greater and thus the susceptibility to malicious attacks.
Every day we can see in the media how criminal hackers take advantage of the insufficient quality of the software for successful attacks by installing malware, stealing passwords and identities, influencing elections with fake news, spying on our end devices and encrypting the IT systems and ransom for blackmail the keys needed to unlock the key. The robustness and resilience of our IT systems is not sufficient and the level of cyber security does not correspond to the „state of the art“. With digitalization, the risk of damage is currently increasing!
If we cannot tackle these cyber security problems in the future with more effective cyber security solutions and thus build trust, sustainable digitization will not succeed.
Current and future damage
According to a Bitkom study, the damage in the area of industrial espionage in Germany is over 102 billion euros a year. States like Germany cannot afford this high amount of damage, especially because it is getting bigger and bigger. The vulnerability of IT and the Internet is increasing and values that are available as bits and bytes on our IT systems are becoming more and more risky for individual companies, citizens and the state.
Another and increasingly significant challenge is cyberwar. Attacks on critical infrastructures, such as energy, water, food, health care, represent a higher level of vulnerability in our society and form a new level of existential threat and therefore become the economic relevance of the cyber security industry and the need for innovative startups in the Enlarge the area of cyber security / IT security.
With Stuxnet we had to learn that political goals can be implemented easily and very successfully at a cost of around $ 9 million for intelligent malware. With the intelligent malware Stuxnet, the Americans and Israelis have been able to delay uranium processing in Iran by two years.
The terrible alternative to this political goal would have been to have several hundred thousand soldiers invaded Iran, which would not only cost billions of US dollars, but it would also have put human lives at risk. We have to professionally adapt to this new reality of Cyberwar and use significantly more and more effective cyber security solutions to protect ourselves as a society.
The cyber security market, IT security market is increasingly important for the necessary digitization and therefore particularly well suited for startups and founders who want to become particularly involved in digitization.
At p-venture we help you to found and build a successful cyber security company.
See also:
Cyber security industry as a very good market for founders and startups