The new normal of remote work might help employees remain productive amid social distancing, but with change comes new challenges. Those challenges include the increased threat of compromised online security–an opportunity that could benefit cybersecurity exchange-traded funds (ETFs).
“Security and IT teams have been working overtime to meet business goals while simultaneously staying ahead of new threats and scams,” a Microsoft article noted. “‘Providing secure remote access to resources, apps, and data’ is the #1 challenge reported by security leaders. For many businesses, the limits of the trust model they had been using, which leaned heavily on company-managed devices, physical access to buildings, and limited remote access to select line-of-business apps, got exposed early on in the pandemic.”
“Microsoft Threat Intelligence teams reported a spike in COVID-19 attacks in early March as cybercriminals applied pandemic themed lures to known scams and malware,” the article added. “Business leaders reported phishing threats as the biggest risk to security in that same timeframe, with 90% of indicating that phishing attacks have impacted their organization. More than half said clicking on phishing emails was the highest risk behavior they observed and a full 28% admitted that attackers had successfully phished their users. Notably, successful phishing attacks were reported in significantly higher numbers from organizations that described their resources as mostly on-premises (36%) as opposed to being more cloud-based.”
With a heavier reliance on internet and cloud computing, more cybersecurity will help fuel funds like the Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG). As more businesses look to make the internet of things the core of their revenue generation models, it leaves systems more prone to hackers if the right cybersecurity measures aren’t in place.
BUG seeks to provide investment results that generally correspond to the price and yield performance, before fees and expenses, of the Indxx Cybersecurity Index. The thing to note is how technology continues to improve and benefit society, while at the same time, cybersecurity threats increase as well—a byproduct of reliance on cloud computing.
The Sun is Shining on Cloud Computing
With more employees working from home, they’re accessing their company resources via cloud computing. This continuing trend can only fuel ETFs like the Global X Cloud Computing ETF (Nasdaq: CLOU).
Seeking to track the Indxx Global Cloud Computing Index, the fund holds a basket of companies that potentially stand to benefit from the continuing proliferation of cloud computing technology and services. The cloud computing industry refers to companies that (i) license and deliver software over the internet on a subscription basis (SaaS), (ii) provide a platform for creating software applications which are delivered over the internet (PaaS), (iii) provide virtualized computing infrastructure over the internet (IaaS), (iv) own and manage facilities customers use to store data and servers, including data center Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs), and/or (v) manufacture or distribution infrastructure and/or hardware components used in cloud and edge computing activities.
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