While everyone was preparing to fire up the grill over the July 4th holiday weekend, hackers were busy at work.

A group of hackers compromised the operations of Kaseya, an IT software management based out of Dublin. In a statement, Kayesa said fewer than 60 customers were directly compromised by the attack, yet up to 1,500 businesses were affected by the downstream affects.

The perpetrators behind the attack may sound familiar. Remember the Colonial pipeline attack? How about the meat processor JBS?

REvil strikes again. This time around, the Russian-linked group demanded a $70 million ransom in cryptocurrency.

The reason I bring this up is because it’s clearly part of a much bigger problem. Ransomware attacks are becoming more and more common. In fact, Chainalysis estimates that up to $400 million was paid to known ransomware addresses in 2020, a jump of 337% over the previous year.

But it’s not just large companies getting scammed. And it’s not just ransomware attacks, either.

It’s regular Americans that are getting scammed, too.

The FBI released its 2020 Internet Crime Report earlier this year, and the findings are nothing short of alarming.

According to the report, Americans were scammed out of an estimated $4.2 billion last year. The most common frauds were phishing scams, non-payment/non-delivery scams, and extortion.

_{Source: Statista}

This brings us back to a major investing theme we’ve been harping on for years. In fact, my colleague Jimmy Butts over at Top Stock Advisor has been talking about it since at least 2017.

To quote from a piece Jimmy wrote a couple years ago:

“There’s no denying that cybercrime will continue to be a growing industry… and companies that are in the business of protecting the internet and our data will continue to grow.”

Don’t let the fact that we’ve been talking about this for so long fool you. Yes, a lot of money has already been made in this sector. But as long as cybersecurity continues to be a problem, there will still be plenty of meat left on the bone. For individual investors, this is good news if you missed the boat the first time around. In fact, I’ll give you another example where this has happened.

Another Sector That’s Still Growing

Jimmy has also been spending some time talking about how the shift to “the cloud” is just getting started.

In a recent piece, Jimmy showed a chart of the incredible performance of some of the big early players in the space:

These early movers delivered solid gains for years. There were plenty of opportunities to get in as this trend was playing out. But the good news is this trend is just getting started. New players are entering the game practically every day, and practically each one has something new to offer that we didn’t know we needed before.

Not only that, but as Jimmy has pointed out, the cloud has barely touched small and mid-sized businesses:

Estimates have it that there are over 100 million SMBs worldwide, many of which haven’t the slightest clue that they could leverage technology to streamline many processes in their companies, which would save time, cut costs, and improve margins.

But that’s changing fast. Many small and mid-sized companies are just beginning this process.

Even if you’re a decent-sized mom-and-pop business, in order to scale, you’re going to need a sophisticated website than can handle sales leads, create a funnel for customers, and connect them with technicians who can set appointments.

Multiply that by a few million, and you start to wrap your head around how big a deal this really is.

The point is, investors shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking they’ve missed the boat on big gains from “the cloud”. There’s still plenty to go around…

The Takeaway

The same is true for cybersecurity. In fact, this is often true of many “big trends” — they often take years to fully develop. So if you miss the early wave (whether it’s the cloud, cybersecurity, video streaming, electric vehicles, etc.), then take heart. Don’t think you have to abandon your search for big winners in these spaces.

As for cybersecurity, this is one of the most obvious investing opportunities staring us in the face right now. Some names to consider include: Splunk, Fortinet, Palo Alto Networks, FireEye, CyberArk Software, CrowdStrike, and more…

There’s also the PureFunds Cybersecurity ETF (NYSE: HACK) if you’re not interested in picking winners and instead simply want to ride the trend.

And if you’re looking for more insight into what the future looks like – and how you can profit – then you’re in luck…

Back in January, Jimmy and his research team over at Top Stock Advisor released seven major investment predictions, along with specific stocks to buy to capitalize on each one of them. So far, 6 out of 7 are up, and one has already gained 391%.

But their new “bonus” prediction may be our boldest one yet…

It involves the world’s largest silver deposit… and how a big push for nationalization in this South American country (plus inflation) could drive silver to $200 an ounce. Here’s how to capitalize on the move before it’s too late.