You know the Internet you’ve grown fond of, well you can wave it goodbye, says Robert Herjavec, CEO of the Herjavec Group, a Top 100 MSSP for 2017.
What’s up with that? Turns out it’s Herjavec’s view of security in the coming age of the Internet of Things (IoT). “We’re getting to the point where the internet is ceasing to exist,” he told Business Network News. “The internet now is electricity. We’re in a fully connected world. There’s a whole generation of people that are just connected to everything all the time.”
Because every single connection is an access point, the opportunities for hackers have become virtually limitless, he suggests. “So a self-driving car can be hacked - and has been hacked,” Herjavec said, pointing to a video he recently saw depicting someone parking in front of a house, hacking into a car owner’s electronic remote access key and subsequently stealing the vehicle.
“Everything can be hacked today,” he said.
Herjavec said that although his outfit has been “talking about for a long time,” he thought security would be a “niche or adjunct market to something else.” Now, he said, it’s clearly a standalone industry and is “here to stay,” prodded by the stratospheric rise in cyber threats, hackers, nation state attacks and compliance issues that have roiled the market.
“What a lot of businesses don’t realize is 50 percent of the market is being driven by compliance,” Herjavec said, pointing to an increase in government mandated privacy and data security regulations such as the impending General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).
Herjavec, who also stars on the hit television show Shark Tank, where entrepreneurs pitch their products directly to potential investors, said that 1,600 security-centric startups begin operations every year. “They’re not all going to make it but some of them are going to be really big,” he said.
As for his own business, managed services revenue has grown by more than 100 percent this year, Herjavec said. “There’s no shortage of work and the world is getting much more complicated,” he said.
