Opportunities for SMEs in Cybersecurity

The September Business Leadership Series Webinar titled Opportunities for SMEs in Cybersecurity featured presentations from Dan Woolley, Managing Director at Ponderosa Management Group and Matt Whitmarsh, EVP of a successful cybersecurity SME.

According to CSO Magazine, what’s in store for the future of the cybersecurity industry can be summarized by the following points:

1. Cybercrime damage costs to hit $6 trillion annually by 2021.
2. Cybersecurity spending to exceed $1 trillion from 2017-2021.
3. Cybercrime will more than triple the number of unfilled cybersecurity jobs.
4. Human attack surface to reach 6 billion people by 2022.
5. Global ransomware damage costs exceeded $5 billion in 2017

Today, the large companies that provide cybersecurity technology cannot keep up with the threat, technology, and innovation. Because of this, companies like Microsoft, are investing into early-stage companies. The landscape where technology is coming from is rapidly changing and the cybersecurity sector is gaining momentum. For example, in 2017, cybersecurity startups raised a record $7.7B across 552 deals, including a record of 10 $100M+ mega-deals.

Matt Whitmarsh agrees that there is immense opportunity with high risk when it comes to SMEs entering the cybersecurity market. In fact, cybersecurity unemployment is at 0% and there are 1 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs globally today and by 2021, there will be 3.5 million unfilled jobs globally. In 2018, cybersecurity spending reached $96 billion in 2018.

Both speakers agree because of the high demand, now is a great time for SMEs to enter the cybersecurity market. According to Ginni Rometty, IBM’s CEO, “Cybercrime is the greatest threat to every company in the world.”