Merrill Lynch – Making Cents of Cyber-Security

Cyber crime in the form of cyber attacks and data breaches is on the rise globally according the latest guidance to investors from Merrill Lynch’s Office of the CIO. In this guidance Ashvin Chhabra and his team highlighted that 91% of US companies have been hit by cyber threat in the past year, a reflection of the estimated 118,000 attempted attacks per day in 2014 according to PWC. Global spending on cyber-security solutions by companies reached $71 billion in 2014 and BofAML Global Research reports that companies are expected to increase their investment by 8% in 2015. Despite this investment currently only 31% of organisations can discover breaches using their own resources, according to FireEye, a Silicon Valley network security company. Investors should therefore look to corporations focused on systems software, data storage, communications equipment, IT consulting, internet and application software and analysis of machine generated big data. (VIEW LINK)