Top Cybersecurity Trends of 2024

Consumer-facing VPN products have been growing for years but not just because of privacy concerns: many top consumer VPNs tout their ability to bypass geo-based content blocking on sites like Netflix. Now, corporate VPNs are getting more attention, but their growth is driven by different concerns.

IT security is challenging because the defender has to be right every time, while the attacker needs to be right - or even just get lucky - only once. Meanwhile, increasing work from home has offered new challenges: people don’t always follow strict security protocols when they’re not at the office.

The high growth of corporate VPNs like Tailscale isn't just a function of the pandemic, though. The IPO window is open more each month, with hundreds of special-purpose acquisition companies hunting for a business to take public. One thing public companies have to do is ensure access controls and auditability for their systems, especially anything that touches their finances. This has been a tailwind to VPN companies, especially newer players who can quickly get a business compliant.

One thing the fanciest office perks have in common is that they’re designed to keep people at the office, working hard. Whether it’s a company cafeteria, a WiFi-enabled shuttle, or on-site laundry, perks are a way for companies to buy a bit more employee time at favorable rates. When workers go remote, these perks largely stop applying, so companies have to offer employees something they can enjoy at home. Meanwhile, working from home has led to new security issues; blurring the boundary between home and office means mixing the definition of home and office computer.

IdentityIQ is one such offering. It’s an identity theft protection service that monitors people’s credit to detect unauthorized borrowing, and insures them against fraud losses. The company’s ads pitch this, not just to end users, but to their employers. In fact, their Facebook ads, targeting employers, cite the productivity losses from victims of identity theft.

Any time a large amount of money changes hands—a home purchase, for example—identity theft insurance is a natural cross-selling opportunity. IdentityIQ doubles down on this idea and runs Facebook ads targeting real estate brokers, offering them a commission for selling the insurance to their clients.

Under the hood, IdentityIQ doesn’t actually do the insuring- they really just whitelabel AIG’s insurance plans. It’s a growing model: The bigger companies are good at underwriting, but not necessarily good at marketing or branding, so there’s a sub-industry that wraps existing insurance products in a better UI.

Information security professionals have learned that some people just love breaking into secured systems, and they'll be better-off gamifying that than fighting it. HackTheBox is a virtual penetration-testing tournament: users are challenged to break into simulated systems as quickly as possible. When the site launched, it "required" an invite code—but savvy users were expected to hack their way around this limitation.

Sites like this increasingly became popular after Youtube started banning content showcasing how to bypass websites—security measures and new entrants into the space looked for other ways to learn.

The pace of change in software makes it hard to hire purely based on credentials. Schools can still filter for raw ability, and can give students a thorough grounding in theory, but practice evolves faster than curricula. That's especially true in security, where there's an arms-race between hackers and IT teams—security holes get patched, new exploits get discovered, and software updates constantly introduce complex new vulnerabilities. A tournament-style approach with a constant variety of new challenges is the best way to identify people with the combination of skills and adaptability necessary to thrive.

The site has a job board, with different jobs locked based on user rankings. One source of word-of-mouth advertising: security professionals suggest tournaments like HackTheBox as practice for people who have just joined the industry or are interviewing for a new role.

This approach even works in other fields: every designer has a portfolio page, stock-pickers tout their ideas on SumZero and ValueInvestorsClub, and media companies spot talent in indie newsletters and blogs. The closer a job is to a fun hobby, the more likely it is that a tournament-based job board will work.

While online privacy may seem like the most obvious use case for VPNs, more and more people actually say they use the services to access Netflix and YouTube internationally, among other geo-fenced content libraries.

Surfshark, which launched in 2018, sets itself apart from other VPN providers with a rock-bottom price for long-term contracts and an explicit promise to unblock the Netflix libraries of 15 countries, including the U.S., U.K., and India. As the streaming wars rage on, exclusive licensing deals are likely to only become more common, driving users to pay for VPNs to avoid the frustratingly common, “this content isn’t available in your country.”

According to one study, nearly 30% of all VPN users access Netflix in any given month. And because Netflix only has about 7% market share of the global video streaming market, and is now focused heavily on growth abroad, there will continue to be a huge opportunity for VPNs like Surfshark as more consumers subscribe to Netflix and need to get around the geo-fences.