Dark Reading is part of the Informa Tech Division of Informa PLC

This site is operated by a business or businesses owned by Informa PLC and all copyright resides with them.Informa PLC's registered office is 5 Howick Place, London SW1P 1WG. Registered in England and Wales. Number 8860726.

Database Security
Authentication
Mobile
Privacy
Compliance
Careers and People
Identity & Access Management
Security Monitoring
Advanced Threats
Insider Threats
Vulnerability Management
Comments
Is The Cybersecurity Bubble About To Burst?
Newest First  |  Oldest First  |  Threaded View
crawdaddio
100%
0%
crawdaddio,
 User Rank: Apprentice
2/12/2016 | 9:23:47 AM
InfoSec profession needs to mature
Agreed. It can be hard to compete with the $$ thrown around by the next shiny object. For the most part, these new VC-funded firms have developing "competitive" technology that looks pretty and provides enough services (bells and whistles) to get the market's attention. And, the market is there ($75B per Gartner). What's amazing is how many of these firms provide reactive services (analzye and fix a problem) instead of proactively preventing it in the first place. Why would an enterprise allow itself to be compromised knowing they have a vulnerability? 

The smart buyers who see the bigger picture know this. Unfortunately, infosec is a frantically-growing profession and lacks the maturity to see beyond the flashn. Eventually, the profession will mature and realize that their bandaid approach will only work for so long and eventually it will fail (and the market will respond). The market will look vastly different in the next few years. The smart buyers who see the bigger picture know this. 

 
whitehatblackhat
50%
50%
whitehatblackhat,
 User Rank: Apprentice
2/12/2016 | 9:08:29 AM
Bulls on Parade
Cybersecurity isn't going anywhere.   What you have seen in the past two years with new public offerings are race to the gate companies with unproven technology that can quickly be overcome buy more established players in the space.   They are all buyout targets at this point.

The threat landscape will never stop changing, and the protection of data will continuously evolve as that landscape changes.   It is literally a never ending self fueling industry with huge upside.

Problem is with unknowledgeable investors who do not know jack about the underlying technology and evolving threat landscape.   They pour money into companies based upon guess work, rising tides, and high valuations.   When markets rattle, this high valuers pull out of their low information investment decisions, which is why you will see the high swings up and down.

PANW is stellar.   Great product, great company, went out and is beating the pants off the old guard in that particular segment of cyber.    Cyberark, great product, great company...best at what it does in that particular niche.   Fireye, an amalgamation of splinters of threat identification...good at some and not so good at others.   It's trying to acquire it's way out of obsoletion.

The rest of the bunch rapid, fortinet, et al...rising tide players only.   Never had it together in the first place.

Forescout is 15 years old, proven, robust...does what it says it can do and very well.   They too will be a force and long term player.

Don't jump in if you don't know what you are doing.   This isn't picking a cell phone company stock, or energy company stock, or other well known space offering tied to some transparent traded commodity.   If you don't know how and how frequently the cyber security space is elvoving, then stay out of the winner picking business in this space.   There will be many winners, but many more who fail.
PaulV378
100%
0%
PaulV378,
 User Rank: Strategist
2/10/2016 | 6:36:37 PM
what was the meaning of PETS.COM?
last time we explosively overheated an internet technology market was 1999 or so. this ended messily, and the signal of the end was the failed PETS.COM IPO. apparently there was no there there, and everybody knew it, but i guess folks were hoping they could squeeze out one more vapid also-ran before the party was over.

i didn't involve VC's in my current venture, because i wanted to do a bunch of crazy stuff like reach breakeven and then grow organically on a single small seed round, rather than trading dilution to get fast -- but usually brittle and unsustainable -- growth. so far i'm pretty happy with that decision, and it puts me in mind to speak as an outsider in the current mess:

competing with someone who doesn't have to earn money before they can spend it, is irritating.

so, if the VC community gets cold feet about my industry for a little while, i'm OK with that.

which means i challenge this article's assumption that the industry's health can be determined by deal size and exit size trends. customers and employees matter a lot, it's not just the shareholders who need to be counted here.
oneilldon
50%
50%
oneilldon,
 User Rank: Guru
2/10/2016 | 4:34:54 PM
Cyber Security is Beyond the Tipping Point
The Cyber Security has reached the tipping point. The cat is out of the bag. Even Corporate Board members are getting the idea... since these individual may be liable for damages.

Cyber Security is an intractable problem without a known, provably correct solution. This presents an irreconcilable dilemma for board members who have a responsibility to safeguard the enterprise. Congress recognized this in the Cyber Security Disclosure Act of 2015 designed to encourage disclosure of Cyber Security expertise on corporate boards.

In a quandary and caught in a paradox between an incomplete Cyber Security theory and practice and the more complete and well specified fiduciary duties and risk oversight responsibilities, no amount of compliance monitoring or Cyber insurance can fully protect the enterprise. Just how to thread the needle of this legal quandary! How can board member failure be avoided when the organization insists on trusting data and information it cannot afford to lose to an Internet which cannot be protected? Corporate board members who find themselves overseeing overcommitted Internet dependencies are looking for a new way of thinking.

So no wonder the bloom is off the rose in the stock market for Cyber Security offerings.
Sara Peters
100%
0%
Sara Peters,
 User Rank: Author
2/10/2016 | 11:22:12 AM
Yowza
I confess that I generally don't pay much attention to the vacillations of The Market -- something I'm sure my 401K would scold me for, if it were a sentient being -- but I find this both intriguing and a little disconcerting.

I wonder, is it just that people aren't buying into the one-stop security shop anymore? What is it they're looking for -- something more tailored, more cutting-edge, more affordable, more flexible -- that they don't think the big names can give them? Or are the investors' behaviors entirely disconnected from the behaviors of the buyers right now?

Help me out here, people.

 

 


Edge-DRsplash-10-edge-articles
I Smell a RAT! New Cybersecurity Threats for the Crypto Industry
David Trepp, Partner, IT Assurance with accounting and advisory firm BPM LLP,  7/9/2021
News
Attacks on Kaseya Servers Led to Ransomware in Less Than 2 Hours
Robert Lemos, Contributing Writer,  7/7/2021
Commentary
It's in the Game (but It Shouldn't Be)
Tal Memran, Cybersecurity Expert, CYE,  7/9/2021
Register for Dark Reading Newsletters
White Papers
Video
Cartoon
Current Issue
How Enterprises Are Assessing Cybersecurity Risk in Today's Environment
The adoption of cloud services spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic has resulted in pressure on cyber-risk professionals to focus on vulnerabilities and new exposures that stem from pandemic-driven changes. Many cybersecurity pros expect fundamental, long-term changes to their organization's computing and data security due to the shift to more remote work and accelerated cloud adoption. Download this report from Dark Reading to learn more about their challenges and concerns.
Flash Poll
Twitter Feed
Dark Reading - Bug Report
Bug Report
Enterprise Vulnerabilities
From DHS/US-CERT's National Vulnerability Database
CVE-2021-4172
PUBLISHED: 2022-01-22
Cross-site Scripting (XSS) - Stored in GitHub repository star7th/showdoc prior to 2.10.2.
CVE-2022-23807
PUBLISHED: 2022-01-22
An issue was discovered in phpMyAdmin 4.9 before 4.9.8 and 5.1 before 5.1.2. A valid user who is already authenticated to phpMyAdmin can manipulate their account to bypass two-factor authentication for future login instances.
CVE-2022-23808
PUBLISHED: 2022-01-22
An issue was discovered in phpMyAdmin 5.1 before 5.1.2. An attacker can inject malicious code into aspects of the setup script, which can allow XSS or HTML injection.
CVE-2022-21707
PUBLISHED: 2022-01-21
wasmCloud Host Runtime is a server process that securely hosts and provides dispatch for web assembly (WASM) actors and capability providers. In versions prior to 0.52.2 actors can bypass capability authorization. Actors are normally required to declare their capabilities for inbound invocations, bu...
CVE-2022-21708
PUBLISHED: 2022-01-21
graphql-go is a GraphQL server with a focus on ease of use. In versions prior to 1.3.0 there exists a DoS vulnerability that is possible due to a bug in the library that would allow an attacker with specifically designed queries to cause stack overflow panics. Any user with access to the GraphQL han...