The cyber security industry is an idealized crime-fighting cabal that theoretically protects and counters hackers. In short the masters of the security industry keep it Internet safe.
In every story, there are the good and the bad, but in this story the good people do everything they can to keep their opponents.
Unfortunately, it's not just a simple story. The reality is that cyber security is a corrupt industry that needs bad guys to stay lucrative.
Major security vendors are earning billions of dollars from selling software that they know will not work. This fraud undoubtedly makes companies more corrupt than the hackers themselves.
Safety and insecurity
First of all, we need to prove that the security industry is, in fact, full of security gaps. The global cyber security market is set to cost $ 75.000 million in 2015 and experts estimate that it will more than double to $ 155740000000 billion by 2019.
Companies spend billions of dollars on cyber-security technology to protect themselves from security incidents that are rising rapidly.
According to Price Waterhouse Coopers, the total number of security incidents increases by 66% year-on-year starting with 2009.
In 2014, there were 117.339 attacks per day, an increase of 48% compared to the previous year. Needless to say, all the increases we mention are accompanied by corresponding financial losses.
Not only are hacks and breaches becoming more frequent and costly, but they are also happening on a larger scale - 77.000.000 accounts have been leaked by JPMorgan, 80 million by Anthem, Target, Home Depot, Sony, and the list continues to grow.
Η connection between the most cyber breaches and the biggest costs is clear. What is not clear is whether greater spending on security technology reduces crime.
Most of the security products currently in use use the 20 century technology against 21 century enemies.
Stale bread
The tools of the largest security providers are based primarily on an outdated, knowledge-based antivirus approach and the recording of past attacks. Threats are detected by the software by comparing them with known threats already recorded and recorded in a virus (virus updates).
Most of the security products currently available on the market are just a half way better than old anti-virus products.
Of course, the method they use fails in today's attacks using attack software that has never been detected before. Modern cybercriminals are much more sophisticated than 2000's methods. They are no longer kids who experiment with their new computer, and they try a penetration tool they downloaded from the internet.
They are professionals and have adequate resources from crime syndicates or governments that put millions of dollars in research and development. If you put one hundred million viruses in your blacklist of security software, hackers will hit with a mechanical attack that is 100000000 and one.
These security approaches don't really protect anyone because what happened a day ago is not guaranteed to happen today. So you should watch out for threat intelligence clouds, sandboxing, containerization, and white listing. Everything is based on stale information and they don't work.
An unholy alliance
Companies that develop these products and have them earning millions of dollars, know they will not work. Then, when they fail, suppliers are asking for even more millions of dollars to tell their customers why they failed. It's a bubble.
Without the "robbers", the "cops" have no job. The more violations that occur, the more security companies gain.
Why have we not paid more attention to this unholy alliance between hackers and cyber security providers so far? Why do businesses buy their products?
One factor is confidentiality.
The security industry is not transparent to the alleged security effort, and that means that their inadequate products continue to sell and will continue to fail.
Marketing is another factor.
It's not the best product to win, but the product that has the best marketing.
Big security companies spend massive amounts of money on marketing that helps them grab customers. It is a great success in confusing the market and persuading CSOs to use their product, because none of them have ever bothered to look for a credible company in the field.
A better way
To be effective, security software can not rely on previous knowledge as it does today. It should somehow understand what is going on without looking to find something similar in a list, because that list is inevitably old and incomplete. A better approach is the use of Big Data and Mechanical Learning, which makes it possible to identify patterns and can predict real-time variations based on real conditions. It does not use old or useless information without a smart analysis.
Major security vendors are not following this approach because their interest is to keep violations and malware distribution.
To this end, they are just as guilty as the hackers themselves.
The article The Cyber Security industry's billion dollar scam was published on TNW
