Cybersecurity is becoming increasingly significant due to the increased reliance on computer systems, the Internet and wireless network standards such as Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, and due to the growth of smart devices and the various devices that constitute the ‘Internet of things’.

Owing to its complexity, both in terms of politics and technology, cybersecurity is also one of the major challenges in the contemporary world.

Cybersecurity began in the 1970s when researcher Bob Thomas created a computer programme called Creeper that could move across ARPANET’s network, leaving a breadcrumb trail wherever it went. 1987 was the birth year of commercial antivirus although there were competing claims for the innovator of the first antivirus product. Three Czechoslovakians created the first version of the NOD antivirus in the same year and in the US, John McAfee founded McAfee  and released VirusScan.

With the internet becoming available to the public, more people began putting their personal information online. Organised crime entities saw this as a potential source of revenue and started to steal data from people and governments via the web. By the middle of the 1990s, network security threats had increased exponentially and firewalls and antivirus programmes had to be produced on a mass basis to protect the public.

In the early 2000s crime organizations started to heavily fund professional cyberattacks and governments began to clamp down on the criminality of hacking, giving much more serious sentences to those culpable.

The cybersecurity industry is continuing to grow at the speed of light. The global cybersecurity market size is forecast to grow to $345.4bn by 2026 according to Statista. Ransomware is one of the most common threats to any organisation’s data security and is forecast to continue to increase.