Fintech Timeline: How the Cybersecurity Industry Began

by James · October 5, 2022

By the end of 2021, data revealed that cyber-attacks had cost the global financial industry a staggering USD 3 billion in losses. As sophisticated hackers continue to infiltrate the industry, cybersecurity has become a critical part of fintech as a means of protecting data, assets and institutions. We trace the events that built today’s cybersecurity industry.

Table of Contents

The 1970s

The beginning of connection and viruses

The Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET) was the first connectivity network developed before the Internet itself.

Engineer Bob Thomas created a program that could move between Tenex terminals on the ARPANET, called Creeper. The code printed the message “I AM CREEPER: CATCH ME IF YOU CAN”. across the network. Not at all prophetic…

1979

The first hacker was a teenager

Kevin Mitnick was just 16 years old when he hacked The Ark – a massive system used to develop operating systems. It was located at Digital Equipment Corporation – a major American company in the computer industry from the 1960s to the 1990s.

Mitnick was arrested and jailed over the incident, becoming the first of many cyber attackers to infiltrate commerce over the coming decades.

Early in the 80s

Cyber attacks are becoming a thing

With the advent of cyber attacks present, the 80s signaled the start of a series of problems for computer networks. High-profile attacks that took place in this decade included AT&T, Los Alamos National Laboratory, and National CSS.

In 1983, terms were coined to describe the attacks, including “computer virus” and “Trojan horse”, the latter referring to the Greek Trojan War.

1988

Worms are created

According to some reports, Robert T. Morris – a student studying at Cornell University – wanted to determine the size of the internet as a whole.

To do so, he built the first worm, which would move through the network and infect UNIX systems. But a flaw in the design of the program caused it to infect every machine, one after the other. This led to networks clogged with information, leading to massive system crashes.

1990’s

ILOVEYOU and Melissa

By the 90s the internet had become a global concern and the cyber security industry grew with it. The decade saw the creation of polymorphic virus risks and the first antivirus program. The aim was to increase ways of protecting oneself against risk.

As one hacker group developed after another, companies faced many challenges to improve security to minimize hacking. In the 90s, malicious viruses were also launched on a mass scale, when ILOVEYOU and Melissa infected millions of computers by targeting Microsoft Outlook.

2000 and beyond

Cyber warfare and political infiltration

From the early noughties to the present, there has been a steady increase in cybercrime and the threat it poses to economic stability. Ransomware and malware are used by organized criminals to infiltrate and extort data and funds from even the best-fortified devices.

The cybersecurity industry globally is now worth an estimated $140 billion. No business is beyond attack, as the 2021 SolarWinds breach proves, along with thousands of other recent incidents. Cyber infiltration is now considered a form of warfare.