Cyber security is booming and that’s on us
Good news, the cyber industry is booming. According to a report launched at the Cyber Ireland National Conference (CNC24), the largest cyber security industry conference in Ireland, it contributed €1.2 billion to the Irish economy over the past 12 months. The report also claimed the workforce in the cyber security sector would double to 17,000 people by 2030.
Pretty good, huh? According to the survey the number of firms in the sector stands at 535, employing almost 8,000 individuals. Almost half (47%) of companies are Irish and have less than 50 employees. Cyber security sector revenue is €2.7 billion, with a gross value added of €1.2 billion.
Those are not numbers to be dismissed lightly, so let’s not do that.
But while I understand why the figures can be seen as a cause for celebration, I also can’t help feeling a slight tinge of sadness for the deeper truth they represent that often goes overlooked.
What makes cyber security valuable? What causes its value to grow and the number of people working in that sector to double in six years or so?
If we look past the headlines we need to acknowledge that this is much a failure as a triumph.
Look at it this way. Why does the cyber security industry exist? The simple answer is because more and more of the things we do, that businesses, organisations, governments do is digital. Nearly everything is online and nearly all of it is vulnerable without some level of protection.
And the fact is that the scope of the risk we face from our cyber world is far greater than any we faced in the analogue past. Personal information, confidential data and files, can be accessed and their contents downloaded with the tap of a key. And so much of it. What might fill a truck if it was on paper, maybe a fleet of trucks, can be sent to an outside location and downloaded in seconds.
If you looked at things from a slightly different perspective, you could argue that the cyber security industry exists because so much of our data is now more insecure than it was when it was paper-based. Whatever the merits of that argument, it’s true that the digital world has created so much more data and more points of vulnerability than previously existed. And in that context, there’s no way cyber security can’t help but grow. As things stand, it can only stop growing if the security of our data surpasses the threats against it.
But the one thing we’ve seen is that cyber threats are evolving all the time, adapting to attack any new potential areas of vulnerability.
That can be difficult when often the greatest vulnerability is us. It’s little wonder that so much cyber security seems aimed at protecting systems and data from people. But that also raises another question: why are we so often the weak link?
Perhaps it’s because people have always done silly things, like forget to lock the back door, leave the oven on or forget to take the car keys out of the ignition. Now imagine a world where the average person in Ireland has 70 digital accounts. The odds on a security breach suddenly seem disconcertingly high.
In the analogue world, the average person didn’t have that level of responsibility as a potential security risk to so many organisations, businesses, shops, charities, basically anything they interact with.
That has given rise to a world where the growth of the cyber security industry is a price worth paying to preserve the ignorance of the average person over just how dangerous they can be in the online world. Ignorance is bliss.
And bliss is worth celebrating.
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