Photo: Kurhan
With a growing rate of publicized hacking incidents, the demand for information security has companies, governments and investors looking toward IT security providers for protection from network intruders. The industry has experienced a rapid growth within the market, and many companies are acquiring IT solutions to join in on the growing demand.
Although the market is still in a major transition, many financial experts are advising investors to look toward the cyber industry.
According to Minyanville Media, cybersecurity firms such as Sourcefire and Fortinet Incorporated were trading at 55 and 64 times their expected 2011 earnings, respectively. Stocks such as Symantec, Iron Mountain and Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. have all outperformed the S&P 500 in 2011.
To offer some insight into the market for buyers looking to get into the cybersecurity game, Minyanville released this week a list of 10 industry names to keep in mind.
Among the industry’s mid-tier companies, Minyanville listed Symantec, Check Point Security Systems and Sourcefire as promising players. According to Sean Udall, a Minyanville contributor and author of the TechStrat Report, Symantec “has been around for a long time – it’s a security giant.”
“The company’s biggest challenger, McAfee, was bought by Intel, and Symantec has remained a wallflower buyout candidate for the better part of decade,” he added.
Fortinet, Guidance Software and Websense were also listed under this category.
For the larger conglomerates, Minyanville named Cisco, Blue Coat, EMC and Juniper Networks as strong companies in the cybersecurity industry.
Udall believes Juniper is just the type of company to benefit most from increased demand for online security. “Think about the amount of Internet commerce done today vs. 10 years ago,” he said. “Credit card numbers and Social Security numbers are flying through the Internet all the time and most of them are safe because of these security networks.”
