Total venture capital funding in the space totaled $5.3 billion
in 2018, up 20 percent from $4.4 billion seen in 2017.
"We're seeing mega-breaches happening on an extremely frequent
basis," Chris Ahern, data scientist and principal at Strategic
Cyber Ventures, told Reuters on Wednesday.
"I don't think that's going to stop anytime soon. And investors
are seeing that as an opportunity for investment."
Cybersecurity has become the focus for governments and
corporations around the world as digital crime increases.
The latest quarterly data from cybersecurity firm ThreatMetrix
showed that it detected 210 million attacks in the first quarter
last year, with another 151 million seen in the second quarter.
Compared with 2015, cyberattacks have surged more than 100
percent, illustrating an overall heightened risk landscape over
the last two years, ThreatMetrix said.
U.S. cybersecurity firms took the bulk of investments,
accounting for 46 percent of investments in 2018, according to
the Strategic Cyber Ventures report. Asian and European
companies took 22.6 percent of global investment, up from 12.7
percent in 2014.
"We've seen this trend in the broader tech ecosystem as well,
with many large international funds and investment outside of
the U.S.," the report said.
"Simply put, amazing and valuable technology companies are being
created outside of the U.S."
That said, Ahern sees a bit of a pullback in investments for
this year. "There is still a lot of money being put to work in
2019. I do think investors are a little bit weary, there's a bit
of vendor fatigue," he added.
Asked about the biggest cybersecurity threat in the world,
Strategic Cyber Ventures co-founder and chief executive officer
Hank Thomas told Reuters that he considers the People's
Liberation Army -- China's armed forces -- as the largest cyber
threat actor in the world.
"They're playing the long game. They have been able to use cyber
to facilitate all sorts of things beyond just information
warfare," said Thomas, who is a former U.S. army intelligence
officer focused on cyber, signals intelligence, information
operations, and military intelligence planning.
Strategic Cyber Ventures has a $100 million portfolio that
includes four cybersecurity companies.
(Reporting by Gertrude Chavez-Dreyfuss; Editing by Phil
Berlowitz)
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