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Information Technology Security Consultants

History

The first malicious software program (later called a worm) was released onto the Internet on November 2, 1988, by Robert Tappan Morris, a graduate student at Cornell University. The worm caused an estimated 6,000 computers (or 10 percent of all computers connected to the Internet) to fail. Today, more than 4 billion people are connected to the Internet, and the number and variety of threats to IT systems is infinitely greater, creating a strong need for IT security specialists.

Information technology consulting began as a small subsector of management consulting, but the emergence of the personal computer and the Internet in the 1980s and 1990s created strong demand for IT security consultants. Major consulting firms such as EY and Deloitte created or expanded their IT security practices and many niche IT security consulting firms were founded to satisfy growing demand. The U.S. IT consulting sector had revenues of almost $713 billion in 2020, according to IBISWorld, up from $481 billion in 2020.

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