US Cyber Command To Expand Operations As Election Day Precaution: Governments Around The Globe Are Investing In Cybersecurity Solutions
6 Nov, 2020
During the US presidential elections 2020 this week, government officials have been working hard to ensure that there is no foreign interference in the results. The US National Security Agency and Cyber Command conducted an operation against Iran in late October, targeting Iranian hackers who were believed to have sent threatening emails to American voters. The US Cyber Command expanded its operations and aimed at identifying malicious foreign cyber actors before Tuesday`s election, conducting missions to not only seek out Iranian hackers, but those from all major adversaries, including Russia and China. Amidst the chaos of COVID-19, governments around the world are investing in the cybersecurity market, as remote working culture has become the norm, and cyber-crimes are on the rise. According to Kaspersky, global cyber threats are developing rapidly with the mounting number of data breaches. A report from RiskBased Security revealed that about 7.9 billion records were exposed by data breaches in the first nine months of 2019, which was double the number of records exposed in 2018 during the same period.
Details of the specific US operation targeting Iranian hackers remain unclear, but the news comes as officials remain on high alert for potential foreign interference on Election Day. Cyber operations against foreign actors, across the whole spectrum of offensive and defensive measures, began ahead of the election and will continue after the final ballot is cast.
Increasing government investments in cybersecurity solutions is a major trend shaping the growth of the cybersecurity industry. For instance, in October 2019, the UK government announced a multi-million investment project of $48 million (£36 million) to protect the country’s businesses from cyberattacks. Additionally, the cybersecurity services market has benefitted from the pandemic as it has changed working culture dynamics and remote working is now prevalent in most companies. These factors will drive the global cybersecurity market size, which is expected to grow from $149.46 billion in 2019 to $208.28 billion in 2023 at CAGR of 11.02%, according to Global Market Model estimates.
The cybersecurity market consists of sales of cybersecurity software and related services. Cybersecurity is the practice of protecting the network, computers, mobile devices, hardware, electronic systems and data from digital or malicious attacks. It is also known as electronic information security and information technology security. Cybersecurity can be segregated into categories including network security, application security, information security, operational security and others.
