New Cybersecurity Focus for Silicon Valley Firms

Anonymous may be good for business.

The market for cybersecurity is "exploding" in Silicon Valley, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

The security sector of the tech industry is worth some $67 billion annually, and companies like old guard mainstays Hewlett Packard and Intel are competing with relative upstarts Google and Apple to buy up security firms and seize the market, the newspaper reported.

HP CEO Meg Whitman is scared enough of sophisticated hackers to call security "the issue of the day," the newspaper reported.

"This is now organized crime," she said, noting that back in the day at eBay, she was more concerned about hack-happy teens.

HP is highlighting security's importance with its hiring practices: it's shedding its overall workforce by 29,000 people, but hiring for 150 security-related gigs, the newspaper noted.

There are "more than 100 companies" in the Bay Area working now on security concerns, the newspaper reported.