Cybersecurity Spending Is Increasing Drastically, Here’s How To Profit
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America’s largest bank is a big target for cybercriminals. At a recent conference, JPMorgan Chase revealed that the bank has to keep track of 45 billion events on its network every day. That’s more than 500,000 per second. Any one of them could be a hacker trying to break in. And the bad guys are getting smarter, quicker, and sneakier.
JPMorgan pays more than 62,000 tech workers to help defend against cybercrime. The bank has more engineers than even Google or Amazon. Cybersecurity is a top priority because millions of people trust them with their money. JPMorgan spends about $15 billion every year on technology to help improve its cyber defenses.
Cyberattacks are a growing menace for many companies. Today, I’ll show you why spending on cybersecurity is going to keep increasing in the coming years. And I’ll show you one way to profit from this trend while collecting a reliable income.
Why Cybersecurity Spending is Only Going to Increase
Cybercrime is one of the fastest-growing expenses companies face today. When a hacker breaks into a computer system, they can steal company secrets and personal data for millions of customers. And it’s not just data that’s at risk. A cyberattack can have real-world consequences.
In 2021, a cyberattack shut down the Colonial Pipeline for nearly a week. That led to gas shortages across several states. Last year, cyberattacks took down computer systems at multiple hospitals for nearly a month. And hackers got into the computers of MGM Resorts, locking customers out of their rooms and costing the casino $100 million in lost business.
Cybercrime cost American businesses an estimated $320 billion in 2023. That’s a 45% increase over 2022. And it’s not going to stop there.
Cybercrime is projected to drain over $1.8 trillion out of American pockets by 2028. That means spending on cybersecurity is also going to increase as companies try to protect their profits.
The trend is going to continue for decades, if not centuries to come. So how can you profit from it? Invest in Cisco (CSCO).
Why Cisco is a Great Way to Profit From This Trend
Cisco is one of the biggest companies providing networking hardware. That means that a large part of the internet’s traffic flows through the equipment that the company produces. That gives Cisco a unique opportunity to help stop cyberattacks before they happen.
Over the past 20 years, Cisco has started to fall behind on technology. That’s why the market treats it like a boring “old tech” stock.
However, Cisco has recently been buying up a number of small cybersecurity businesses. And it also announced its biggest purchase ever by merging with Splunk (SPLK) – a large cybersecurity firm. That means the company is evolving from a focus on hardware to a cybersecurity business that combines hardware and software to help companies stay safe.
I showed you last month how Cisco could be following the path of Broadcom (AVGO). Broadcom used a series of mergers to evolve from a hardware-focused business to a company that sells both hardware and software.
Broadcom cashed in on huge customer demand for mobile devices and cloud computing. And in the process, the market revalued its stock from 13x earnings to nearly 26x earnings. Shareholders who held on through the company’s transformation earned massive returns, beating the market by 4x in just the past five years.
And Cisco could be the next Broadcom as it taps into the massive growing demand for cybersecurity. Recently, it's been seen trading for just 13x earnings – like Broadcom, before it took off.
Cisco also yields 3% and is a reliable dividend grower that has increased its payout every year since 2011. So, you can get paid to wait while the company tackles the growing cybersecurity market.
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Brad Thomas is the Editor of the Forbes Real Estate Investor.
Disclaimer: This article is intended to provide information to interested parties. ...
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