Editor's pick: the best of 2021, part 4

We complete our pick of the best of 2021 with an interesting piece of research from Frost and Sullivan. The American Business Consulting firm found in its analysis earlier this year that airports are to be the fastest-growing critical infrastructure sector to invest in cybersecurity by 2030.

The research found that while corporate and consumer businesses remain popular marks for cyberattacks, critical infrastructure facilities have become increasingly viable threat targets. They are highly vulnerable to major operational disruptions and cyber incidents that can lead to real-world peril. In light of the damage caused by the Solar Winds attack, this trend will be something to keep an eye on this year and beyond. Read the full story below.

Airports are to be the fastest-growing critical infrastructure sector to invest in cybersecurity by 2030 according to Frost & Sullivan's recent analysis. The research found that while corporate and consumer businesses remain popular marks for cyberattacks, critical infrastructure facilities have become increasingly viable threat targets. They are highly vulnerable to major operational disruptions and cyber incidents that can lead to real-world peril.

Despite the ever-increasing threat landscape and their incredibly high-risk profile, critical infrastructure organisations remain far behind where they should be in their cyber maturity and digital resilience strategies, necessitating a rapid push to fortify cyber defences and manage their cyber-risk profiles.

The global critical infrastructure cybersecurity market, which is segmented into oil and gas facilities, utilities (electric and water), maritime (ports and entry points), and airports, is estimated to reach $24.22 billion by 2030 from $21.68 billion in 2020. The study includes growth drivers, customer priorities, and spending forecasts across verticals and regions.

"While oil and gas facilities will continue to remain the largest segment investing in cybersecurity solutions, airports will prove to be the fastest-growing one, with a CAGR of 10.1%. Spending is expected to reach $1.87 billion by 2030," says Danielle VanZandt, Industry Analyst for Security at Frost & Sullivan.

"This is driven by the ongoing construction of new facilities, significant digitalisation upgrades within existing airports, and the incremental updates being made to cybersecurity systems to keep up with the changing cyber-threat landscape and improve detection capabilities. "

VanZandt adds: "Africa is expected to be the fastest-growing region, followed closely by Asia-Pacific. Much of the investment in both regions is from new facilities being built, renovated, or expanded that require new cybersecurity systems installed, as well as changing consumer awareness of their cybersecurity risks. The Middle East will remain the largest market and will continue to fortify its cyber defences and protect against prevalent cyber-threats."

According to Frost and Sullivan market participants should focus on the following to tap into lucrative growth prospects:

• Data traffic monitoring for operational technology systems: Vendors must ensure that their monitoring solutions can detect the actions of active and passive assets and all data traffic types, then decide how best to analyse the data.
• Network topology solutions for vulnerability and risk assessment: Market participants seeking to provide network topology capabilities need to ensure that they can identify and discover the variety of information technology (IT), Internet of Things (IoT), and operational technology (OT) devices within an organization's network architecture to begin building the topological model.
• Continuous discovery for organizational assets: For security vendors, emphasizing continuous monitoring and automatic discovery tasks will help attract new customers and improve their market share.
• Predictive analytics and threat intelligence for incident detection: Cybersecurity solutions providers must emphasize automatic and predictive capabilities in their system tests and proofs of concept with customers to show how these systems will not overwhelm their existing security functions.
• Secure-by-design initiatives for operational technology assets and systems: Security operators that want to update older OT assets and devices should look at any components that are not engineered via secure-by-design manufacturing.

Thank you for your support

Thank you for your support since the launch of Cyber magazine last year. We have some great new initiatives and events coming up in 2022 and look forward to bringing you more news and interviews on all things cyber. Normal business resumes tomorrow. 

Don't hesitate to contact me with any news, views or feature ideas. I look forward to working with you in 2022.