It is no secret that the frequency and sophistication of cyber attacks are increasing. Everyday brings another horror story. Securing enterprises has become job one for IT departments or is right up there with improving the customer experience. However, that is now, what about looking forward as to which sectors might be impacted in a significant way and what should they be thinking about?

Industry Analyst David Young (News - Alert) of research firm IBISWorld, has thought about this and his analysis, Security Breach: 10 Industries Impacted, is food for thought whether you are one of the industries identified or are a supplier looking for where opportunities will arise.

Ten industries to watch, all in online services

The report starts with the things that we know and scare us. Identity theft in particular has become prevalent as is stands to undermine the thing that ecommerce cannot function without, TRUST.  As Young reminds us, this is really big business.

However, take a look at the list of the industries focused on in terms of those who face outsized risk of intense cyber attacks and thus will increasingly need to turn to the security industry for help. You may be surprised about the sectors, the size of revenues generated/potentially at risk and how fast they are growing. They are all online services entities.

What is impressive is that they happen to cumulatively total $207.1 billion in 2013. As Young points out, if they were a county it would have the 46th-largest economy in the world. In the five years to 2018, these industries are forecast to grow at a combined annualized rate of 7.7% to $285.9 billion, compared to projected average annual GDP growth of 3.3%. And, they are highly profitable, with an average total profit margin of 17.5%.  

What Young says is that because of the strong growth and high profitability this makes them attractive targets for investors and hence those with malicious intent.

The numbers speak for themselves. What each of these might/should be looking for to protect themselves is where the report changes gears and provides some recommendations. Depending on the industry these range from the need for better encryption and authentication to the integrity of the data itself while stored or when being exchanged. 

 In fact, Young concludes that the protection of customer data will be the common denominator for all of these industries. The reasons are many, but at the end of the day this is not unlike what the bank robber Willy Sutton said when asked why he robbed banks. His response was, “Because that is where the money is.”  

While cyber security is a broad and complex topic involving the protection of people, devices, applications content and the networks that are used for accessing stored data and then transporting it, when it comes to e-commerce, all of those user profiles are the bank and that is where the money is. It is why the 10 online business are healthy and growing in consumer, investor and bad guy interest.  

It will be interesting to see when analysts look at IT security spend over the next few years, if the sectors in this report are over or under the average security spending of other sectors. As this report highlights they have a lot to gain from being well protected and a tremendous amount t lose.