Image Source: Pixabay
 

An Introduction

With cybercrime damage reported (see here) to possibly reach $10.29 trillion by 2025 sophisticated cyber security is crucial to protect networks, systems and other digital infrastructure from malicious cyber attacks (see here). It is estimated that cyber security spending was only $188B in 2023 and, with research (source) forecasting that corporate spending on cybersecurity should grow at a CAGR of 13.8% between now and 2030 (source) and that's better than most information-technology spending categories suggesting that many cybersecurity software and hardware companies should be excellent long-term buys.
 

What Are the Many Forms Of A Cyber Attack?

Simply put, as you may well know, a cyber attack is any malicious attack on a computer system, network, or device to gain access and information. They take many forms, such as:

1. malware which is malicious software, including spyware, ransomware, and viruses. that accesses a network through a weakness such as a fraudulent link or email attachment;
2. phishing which involves a fraudulent message that appears to come from a legitimate source through email, text, or social networks with the goal is to steal information by installing malware or by cajoling the victim into divulging personal details;
3. man-in-the-middle which involves an attacker coming between two members of a transaction to eavesdrop on personal information;
4. denial-of-service which involves flooding systems with traffic to clog up bandwidth so they can’t fulfill legitimate requests and, thereby, shut down systems, and
5. password attacks involve stealing passwords.
    

What Is Cyber Security?

Simply put, it’s what organizations do to protect their own and their customers’ data from malicious attacks.
 

What Are The Main Types Of Cyber Security?

There are 4 types, namely:

1. Network security: protects the connections between networks, including data transfers to and from the internet, and hardware like routers and switches
2. Endpoint security: protects devices like laptops, phones, and servers
3. Application security: protects software, data and access at the individual application level
4. Cloud security: protects cloud environments and data from vulnerabilities and threat actors (source)

AI's Role In Cyber Security

AI makes it a perfect value addition technology for cyber security because it is fundamentally a complex mathematical equation that generates outputs with new data by using existing data which enables cyber security companies to train their models with data from previous attacks to create autonomous systems that can detect if an attack is ongoing based on certain readings. This provides companies and users with a critical capability in the risk management framework, as it increases their lead time for an attack and allows them to prepare mitigation and response strategies.
 

The Pure-Play CyberSecurity Software Stocks Portfolio

eSecutityPlanet.com provides a list of cyber security companies (see here) of which the 5 largest of those companies (i.e. +$20B in market capitalization) in munKNEE's Pure-Play CyberSecurity Software Stocks Portfolio. The Portfolio plummeted 15.1% in July primarily due to the weakness in the stock of cybersecurity software provider CrowdStrike (CRWD), a Portfolio constituent, which was DOWN 38.8% in large part as the result of a defective update being sent out on July 19th by the company that caused a global IT outage for Microsoft Windows hosts. (Read: How the world’s tech crashed all at once)

Below are how the 5 constituents have performed MTD, in descending order, along with their market capitalizations, and the most recent news, analyses and commentary on some of them.

1. Fortinet (FTNT): UP 29.9% MTD
   • Market Capitalization: $55.5B
   • Most Recent News, Analyses, and Commentary:
     • Unlocking Fortinet International Revenues: Trends, Surprises, and Prospects
2. CrowdStrike Holdings (CRWD): UP 17.8% MTD
   • Market Capitalization: $66.5B
   • Most Recent News, Analyses, and Commentary:
     • What You Need To Know Ahead of CrowdStrike's Earnings Report
3. Zscaler (ZS): UP 11.8% MTD
   • Market Capitalization: $28.8B
   • Most Recent News, Analyses, and Commentary:
     • Zscaler Laps the Stock Market: Here's Why
4. Palo Alto Networks (PANW): UP 10.8% MTD
   • Market Capitalization: $116.5B
   • Most Recent News, Analyses, and Commentary:
     • Jim Cramer Says Palo Alto Networks Is His “Preferred Cyber Stock”
5. Check Point Software Technologies (CHKP): UP 3.1% MTD
   • Market Capitalization: $21.4B
   • Most Recent News, Analyses, and Commentary:
     • Check Point Software Technologies is One Of the 3 Best Cybersecurity Stocks to Buy in August 2024

Summary

On average, the above 5 pure-play cybersecurity software stocks are UP 13.4% MTD, and have an average market capitalization of $57.5B.
 

Cybersecurity ETF

Investing in a basket of cyber security stocks is a quick and easy way to get investment portfolio exposure to this critical segment of the tech sector. The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG), for example, consists of 31 stocks and has an expense ratio of 0.51%.

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