Glenn Medeiros may have been singing to a lover, but investors are dedicating “Nothing’s Gonna Change My Love For You” to cybersecurity. Not even the biggest cybersecurity outage in history could overshadow the industry’s importance.

Great firewall: Earlier this year, analysts were alarmed when cloud security platform Palo Alto NetworksPANW

announced it would start bundling products to win over increasingly cost-conscious customers. This move raised concerns about a potential price war in the internet security sector, adding to worries as other tech firms also lowered their forecasts. But in the end, the industry has continued to rally — with Global X Cybersecurity ETFBUG

up 30% over the past year. And after a strong quarter of earnings, the market is easing fears about a slowdown.

• Palo Alto Networks’ “Platformization” policy has mostly paid off, with billings rising 12% year-over-year (YoY), leading it to raise its 2024 outlook.
• Competitors have seen similar growth, with ZscalerZS
  , FortinetFTNT
  , and Check Point SoftwareCHKP
  reporting Q2 revenue increases of 32%, 11%, and 7% YoY, respectively.

No Trouble in Cyber-Town

Cybersecurity companies help blunt attacks, prevent data breaches, and minimize outages — but ironically, several have suffered from the same issues they aim to protect against. Still, their shares are doing well, showing the sector’s value.

• OktaOKTA
  , which experienced a data breach affecting virtually all of its clients in Oct. 2023, has seen its stock surge ~40% YoY due to strong revenue growth.
• CrowdStrikeCRWD
  , which caused the “worst IT outage in history” just weeks ago, has climbed 22% from its Aug. 2 lows — with its one-year return still at a stunning 73%.

Forward-looking: With data breaches and hacks becoming a staple of digital society, online safeguarding companies are expected to remain at the forefront. That’s why big players like CiscoCSCO

have made layoffs to lean into the emerging theme — and why GoogleGOOG

bid $23B to acquire a cybersecurity startup. In the end, the crowded cybersecurity field is likely to get even more competitive — but luckily for them, there’s plenty of room to solve America’s digital security problems… just ask all the businesses that got hacked this year.