Cash in on the fight against criminals in your computer

With more people doing more online than ever before, these are good times for cybercrime. The spread of homeworking and online shopping – trends given a huge fillip by the pandemic – mean the internet has never been abetter hunting ground for data, money and weak access points in corporate networks. Cybersecurity is now atop national-security issue at the White House. It’s a perpetual war growing in size and complexity all the time. That makes it a compelling long-term investment theme.

The stakes are high. Intercepting and selling someone’s credit-card details is one thing. Forcing a fuel pipeline to shut down so that thousands can’t fill their cars is a different level of threat. Banks have been hit by fraud for years, but now policymakers are grappling more seriously with attacks in which foreign states are accessing sensitive data and bad actors anywhere can target and potentially cripple the infrastructure supporting an entire economy. Shiny fighter jets don’t do much for a country that can’t turn its lights on. The