Market dynamics
The ever-changing threat landscape and exponential digital transformation, coupled with society’s continued reliance on digital technologies and increasing regulatory and legislative requirements, mean investment in cyber and software resilience is not optional and NCC Group’s addressable market continues to grow. Market dynamics
Increasing regulatory and legislative requirements
Society’s ever-growing reliance on digital technologies
Changing threat landscape
Exponential digital transformation
A changing threat landscape The global geopolitical environment fuels a buoyant cyber resilience market. Strategic competition continues from China, and hostile threats from Iran, North Korea and more notably Russia as the war with Ukraine intensifies. This, coupled with emerging offensive capabilities in other nation states and organised crime groups, creates a volatile state of unpeace that organisations need to prepare for, navigate and defend against. Our own threat intelligence revealed ransomware attacks almost doubled in 2021, rising by 92.7%, with the most targeted regions being North America and Europe. While we saw the most targeted sectors in 2021 being industrials, and public and consumer cyclicals, the scourge of ransomware continues as a distinct threat to organisations of all sizes. Software supply chain attacks inflict mass disruption in all geographies; the real-world kinetic impact of recent cyber-attacks has catapulted a deeper awareness of the threat to our digital lives into the mainstream. Read more on pages 20 and 21 Source: NCC Group Annual Threat Report 2021.
Society’s ever-growing reliance on digital technologies There is no slow-down of the exponential digital transformation, with more and more investment being made in technologies – from government funding in education to encourage digital innovation start-ups to improving efficiency through automation and developing solutions to reduce harm on the environment. This all relies on software and cloud consumption being scalable, and the digital supply chains upon which our connected environment depends are complex and interdependent. In 2021 we saw the impact of this reliance in the ransomware attack on the Colonial Pipeline, which is responsible for approximately 45% of the fuel delivered to the East Coast of the United States. The exfiltration of 100 gigabytes of data by attack group DarkSide, prior to infecting the IT network with ransomware and demanding a payment of 75 bitcoins (c.$4.4m) in ransom fees, prompted the shutdown of the company’s infrastructure. Source: NCC Group Annual Threat Report 2021. Increasing regulatory and legislative requirements Focus on and expectations of ensuring the continuity of essential services – and with it a renewed awareness of the crucial importance of digital business continuity planning – continue to be a priority. And while citizens rightly expect organisations to act responsibly, so legislators and regulators acknowledge that the defence and resilience of schools and hospitals, banks and insurers, water treatment facilities and gas pipelines are too important to be left to chance.
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