Small security vendors have only five years to live, says Home Retail Group

You're staring into the abyss, SMBs

There will be no small security vendors left within five years.

So predicted Home Retail Group head of information security Lee Barney at InfoSec Europe in London today, who argued that they will be swallowed up by larger technology services providers.

"People make things in order to find people to sell them to," stated Barney, speaking on a panel with other cyber security leaders. "To buy them, people need to have money. There is lots of money in cyber security, and I see that money increasing not because technology is improving, but because the industry is getting more sexy - it's called ‘cyber security now, not information security'."

But Barney predicted that this increasing cashflow would simply encourage large vendors to keep developing "as-a-service" models, consuming more traditional, smaller vendors as a matter of course.

"In five years' time there will be more technology, but we'll see the bigger providers - services companies - swallow the smaller companies, and run things as services. In terms of the ease of the business, it's much easier to run as a service than with vendors having to upgrade technology."

Bruce Hallas, founder of security initiative The Analogies Project, which aims to "demystify" cyber security for "general audiences", said the security sector should focus more on "human" skills rather than technical ones in future.

"We need to take our industry firewall down and incorporate that knowledge," said Hallas.

"There's obviously a gap in the market, but in five to 10 years we need to see more training. "When you understand how human behaviour is formed, you can design new programmes."

Hallas reminded delegates that "in the UK, £26bn is spent each year by organisations we represent to influence customers to buy one product over your competitor's. We need to tap into that insight. It might not be a technology issue - we need more people with knowledge around behavioural economics."

Hallas said that all people are "programmed to respond in some way to promotion. It doesn't matter your background or where you grew up, and we need to start to understand how to unlock some of the challenges we face."