It all began with a little virus named Creeper. It slunk from network to network, from computer to computer, leaving an ominous message in its wake: “I’m the creeper. Catch me if you can.”
First Generation: Protective
Creeper’s development in the early 1970s prompted the creation of the first known anti-virus program designed to prevent such attacks. The first antivirus program was made commercially available in 1987 and, alongside firewalls of the 1990s, became known as the first generation of cybersecurity.
Deemed primitive or reactive by today’s standards, first generation cybersecurity was focused on securing network access points around a defined perimeter. These firewalls were the bouncers of the internet, checking IDs at the door. But once someone with a really convincing fake ID snuck past the bouncer, they could drink and party to their heart’s content. Viruses that evolved throughout the 1990s are estimated to have caused $80 million in damage to computer systems.
Second Generation: Investigative
As more data became digitized in the 2000s, more sophisticated and devastating cyberattacks began targeting large corporations and government entities. Second generation cybersecurity employed improved antivirus and firewall programs that assessed threats in real time and leaned on the interoperability of security technologies to identify and inspect threats and secure deeper layers of the network. In the bouncer analogy, second generation cybersecurity assessed not just the ID, but also behavior, appearance, and context clues of the people trying to gain access.
Throughout the 2010s, data at risk of cyberattacks protected by the second generation of cybersecurity were still mostly housed in defined parameters. At the time, trafficv olume and speed was more limited and predictable than they are today when vast and variable amounts of private data can be accessed on an employee’s phone or tablet, in the cloud, anywhere in the world, at any time.
Third Generation: Predictive
Third generation cybersecurity has evolved more recently to handle borderless networks, millions of IoT devices, various applications, and multiple endpoints. It utilizes a fabric-based approach of integrated devices that collect, share, and correlate data to identify threats in real time. Most importantly, third generation cybersecurity utilizes machine learning and AI to predict threats before they happen, follow traffic through the firewall, and autonomously react to suspicious activity once detected.
Third generation cybersecurity companies make up the cybersecurity holdings in TrueShares’ Technology, AI, and Deep Learning ETF (LRNZ). This includes innovative companies on the forefront of AI and machine learning such as Okta, Sentinel One, Crowdstrike, and CloudFlare.
With many of the biggest threats to our safety and security originating in the digital world, innovators in cybersecurity stand to impact the invisible corners of our everyday lives. Those at the forefront of third generation cybersecurity are also those poised to adapt with evolving threats, potentially leading the way to the fourth generation and beyond.
- https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2023/08/14/the-evolution-of-cybersecurity-and-how-businesses-can-prepare-for-the-future
- https://www.fortinet.com/blog/business-and-technology/executive-insights–the-third-generation-of-security-is-here
