KUALA LUMPUR (Dec 30): The cybersecurity industry, with more than US$20 billion (about RM83.4 billion) invested in the sector this year, may very well build off that momentum in 2022.

Citing industry players, Crunchbase, which tracks trends, investments and news of global companies from start-ups to the Fortune 1000, said while this year was driven to new heights by several sectors like cloud, API security, healthcare information technology (IT) and insurance, next year should see a continuation of several of those trends, and some newer ones that started to emerge in the later half of 2021.

In a report on Tuesday (Dec 28), it said that among the sub-sectors and themes that seem primed to elevate their status as venture dollars continue to flood the cybersecurity start-up ecosystem are:

Crunchbase said that there is no denying the explosion the crypto market saw in 2021 and the crazy venture dollars that had been poured into the space.

It said that had helped the industry around securing the new currency market explode as well.

It said that in late November, New York-based Fireblocks—which attempts to solve a variety of issues around crypto, including security, compliance and governance — raised a US$400 million (about RM1.67 billion) Series E round from Sequoia Capital at a valuation of US$8 billion.

The report said further widespread adoption should make the space of securing crypto even hotter.

It said as more traditional banks and financial institutions embrace cryptocurrency and it becomes more a part of people’s vernacular, securing how those digital assets move and are stored will become analysed even more by investors.

It expects large payment companies and even traditional market exchanges to look carefully at the space around security, reporting tools and analytics in the new year.

Citing cybersecurity foundry and investment firm DataTribe chief innovation officer Leo Scott, Crunchbase said cybersecurity loves hot buzzwords and phrases, which could be the next big trend in 2022.

“Another movement we see building steam in 2022 is what I would call the shifting left of compliance,” said Scott.

He said the practice of “shift left” is intended to find errors early in software delivery, while “compliance” in the security world helps make sure best practices are followed and typically include third-party audits.

Scott said he is seeing a move towards a world that would allow developers and IT departments to formally verify that software is in compliance with a specification before the software goes into production.

Crunchbase said with all the talk around the metaverse and Web3 — mostly about what they are and how they will be adopted — questions surrounding data, privacy and securing identity also continue to swirl.

It said that could spell big dollars for start-ups that look specifically at those things as users look to be more in control of all of it in a more decentralised environment that may not be dependent on tech giants like Google and Meta.

One of those main themes likely to come up again and again is the idea of a “portable identity” or a user’s ability to take everything — from social and professional graphs to relationships on various digital platforms — with them seamlessly will probably play a big role.