The development of cyber security

The focus of this bachelor’s thesis is the development of cyber security. A lot has changed in the last 30 years and as the world has become more digitalized, the more threats we face in cyber environment. We have come a long way from the first viruses that infected computers using floppy discs. Today’s threats are more serious and even have physical effects. These threats come from various different sources such as, governments, organized crime and individuals. This thesis aims to understand how the cyber security environment and industry has changed over the years and how it is seen today. The research questions in this thesis are “How has the cyber security environment changed in the last years and how is it seen today?” and “How has the cyber security industry changed?”. The methodologies used in this thesis are academic overview, an online study and an interview. The academic overview focuses on the importance of cyber security in today’s environment. The online study focuses on the development of cyber threats, their nature and cyber security industry. And last I conducted an interview with well-known cyber security expert F-Secure’s Chief Research Officer Mikko Hyppönen to hear his thoughts about the development of cyber security and how the future will look like. Cyber security environment has changed from protecting the endpoint computers from viruses and malware to protecting the whole network of endpoint computers from various threats including malware, phishing and targeted attacks. Also the development of IoT-devices has increased the attack surface. Especially todays targeted attacks have forced the cyber security companies to change their thinking. The fact is that companies can no longer protect themselves from every single attack and thus they have been forced to put more focus on their cyber attack detection and response capabilities. These capabilities are also crucial when EU’s new General Data Protection Regulation becomes enforceable on 25 May 2018. In addition to traditional antivirus software, cyber security companies have started to offer these detection and response tools as well as cyber security consulting, as a response to the paradigm shift in cyber security environment. Cyber security industry is a growing market. Growth is driven by megatrends like cloudification and digitalization. Cyber security plays a huge role in these trends which makes cyber security even more important area to study in the future