New York, San Diego are best known for financial and entertainment hub respectively whereas Washington D.C. is the United States capital. Each of these metro areas also expects to become identical with cyber-security — and for justification. According to Cyber-security Ventures research, global spending on cyber-security will surpass $1 trillion cumulatively from 2017 to 2021, which also envisages cybercrime damages will cost $6 trillion yearly by 2021 — two times the cost in 2015.

With so much to rise, and so much at risk, here are 10 cities, countries and regions, without any particular order, which have established themselves as cyber-security leaders. For example, San Francisco and Silicon Valley, simultaneously others may surprise you.

New York City

New York is in the U.S. and frequently global center of so many world’s — finance, theater, retail and if ambitions pan out, cyber-security. "With New York being the financial capital of the world, cyber-security touches businesses from startups to the Fortune 500, pushing New York to establish first-in-the-nation cyber-security regulations,” describes Verizon Ventures of NYC’s ambitions.

Case in point: Cyber NYC. Declared in November 2018, Cyber NYC is “among the nation’s most ambitious cybersecurity initiatives” and is planned to change the city into a global cyber-security hub over the next decade, as per The New York Times. The project is a joint venture of Israeli venture capital funds, several private-sector companies, and the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

Cyber NYC is likely to form a Global Cyber Center in New York’s Chelsea neighbourhood; a SoHo cyber-security innovation hub; and an academic cyber partnership with the likes of Columbia University and NYU, the Times reports.

NYC has 30 companies with world or local headquarters in the Cybersecurity 500 index, including Booz Allen, Deloitte, Accenture and CA Technologies.

San Diego, California

This is home to the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command. SPAWAR draws cybersecurity talent and spends billions yearly on protecting the Navy’s critical systems. As a result, it is serving as an anchor for the region’s rising cybersecurity industry.

Now, the San Diego area has above 150 cyber-security-focused companies, including AttackIQ, Proficio, MixMode (formerly PacketSled), Sentek Global and Webroot. San Diego has around 8,450 cyber-security jobs, above 11% from 2016, according to the region’s Cyber Center of Excellence. The Center also envisages that over the next three years, San Diego cyber-security jobs will enhance almost 5.5% compared to the region’s overall 4.2% job growth.

Washington, D.C., Metro Area

While with neighboring Maryland, the nation’s capital and adjacent suburbs have come out as a cyber-security hub. “A dominating hub for life sciences and government, Washington, D.C., also serves as a significant outpost for tech companies seeking proximity to policymakers as well as for burgeoning cyber-security investment,” according to real estate firm Cushman & Wakefield’s Tech Cities 1.0 report(2017), which ranked D.C. third on its list of the top 25 tech cities. (The company changed its ranking system in 2018, ranking D.C. amongst the 10 economies in which tech are a vital component.)

According to CIO Dive, access to policymakers is “important as tech becomes a societal issue, requiring more understanding from leadership to create laws that keep up with the rate of change in technology,”. Top tech firms also have a occurrence in D.C. due to the immediacy to Virginia’s “Data Center Alley” of above 70 data centers.

Maryland

Maryland asserts that it has the world’s largest government-trained cyber workforce, with around 110,000 cyber-related engineering and data science jobs, as reported in U.S. News & World Report. Fort Meade, lies almost middle of Baltimore and Annapolis, is headquarters to the National Security Agency (NSA). The state has around 40 government agencies with strong cybersecurity programs, together with the Department of Defense Cyber Crime Center north of Baltimore.

Out of the 2018 Cyber-security 500 list, 15 companies are based in Maryland, including Lockheed Martin (Bethesda), IronNet Cybersecurity (Fulton), Terbium Labs (Baltimore) and Dragos, Inc. (Hanover). In 2017, Israeli-owned ELTA North America, a defense manufacturer, started a Cyber Innovation Center in Annapolis. The center works on “adapting technology and international property from Israel for use by ELTA’s commercial customers in the United States” with an emphasis on cyber-security, The Baltimore Sun reported. In 2017, the Baltimore Cyber Range also opened downtown. It’s a facility to train cybersecurity professionals using risk recreations. And in 2018, Port Covington was rebranded “CyberTown, USA,” a hub for cyber-security and data science in a 235-acre waterfront redevelopment project to open in late 2020.

Israel

“A regional power devoted to ensuring its own survival, Israel has burgeoned into a high tech epicenter built around Internet security, anti-virus software, and other cyber defense technologies,” Fortune posted. “Ensuring that its people remain able to take on threats and at all levels has become center to Israeli governmental strategy and transformed what began as a cottage industry into a thriving sector of the nation’s economy.”

In the 2018 Cybersecurity 500 list, Israel’s 42 companies have secured ranks. The bulk are based in Tel-Aviv and include Check Point Software, Dell EMC Cyber Solutions Group, Cyberbit and Israel Aerospace Industries. Israel has 174 cybersecurity startups according to Cyber Map, an interactive map listing cybersecurity companies by group.

Israel’s government and private sector collaborated in recent years to transform the desert town of Be’er Sheva into a cybersecurity hub, with dozens of startups working alongside large enterprises for example, Lockheed-Martin, Deutsche Telekom and IBM. “The result, to date, is a budding ecosystem of bright minds, dedicated to a common goal of developing world-class cybersecurity technology,” according to Venture Beat.

Forbes reported that Israel is also helping smaller countries like Singapore launch cybersecurity start-ups.

Boston, Massachusetts

In the 1980s, Boston was a leader in the cybersecurity industry, home to leading companies such as RSA Security, founded in suburban Bedford in 1982 (and now held by Dell Technologies).

The area has an irrefutably strong presence in cybersecurity. Other cybersecurity firms with operations here include Carbon Black, Rapid7, Pwnie Express, CyberArk, Cyberreason and Veracode.

Nowadays, more than 12 Israeli cybersecurity firms have launched U.S. operations in Boston, according to WBUR, a indication of ties between the two that go back to Israeli Adi Sharmir’s co-founding of RSA. Add to that the Boston area’s wealth of top research universities and colleges, including Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as well as a thriving venture capital landscape.

Augusta, Georgia

As most people know Augusta as home to the Masters golf tournament, the southern city is silently becoming a cybersecurity hub too. Why Augusta? The reason behind it is Fort Gordon. The close U.S. Army post is home to the Army’s Signal Corps, which specializes in helping America’s military communicate and is also home to a rising NSA presence, according to Cyber Defense magazine.

The Augusta area has long been home to tech- and cyber-related companies for example, Unisys’ worldwide security operations and the high-tech, mixed-use Augusta Cyberworks development at Sibley Mill, tells Cyber Defense. In 2013, the Pentagon declared that it was transferring the U.S. Army Cyber Command to Augusta, which helped to set up the city as a cybersecurity hub, the magazine reports.

Other factors placing Augusta on the map include Augusta University’s Cyber Institute, which just obtained a funding to develop courses for the NSA’s Cybersecurity Core Curriculum Development program, Fifth Domain reports; and the $100 million Georgia Cyber Center, the “single largest investment in a cybersecurity facility by a state government to date,” told the center’s website.

London and the U.K.

It’s not surprising that the U.K. capital has evolved as a leading European cybersecurity hub. The U.K. is also home to GCHQ, known as one of the world’s most advanced cybersecurity organizations, as well as renown universities such as Cambridge, Oxford, and King’s College London, each of which the U.K. government has recognized as "Academic Centres of Excellence in Cyber Security Research."

From 2015, London-based cybersecurity incubator CyLon’s accelerator program has helped 83 startups, its website told. CyLon is Europe’s first cybersecurity incubator; members include firms such as CyberLytic, Intruder and Sphere Secure Workspace.

The rise in cybersecurity threats targeted at Europe, including the Petya and WannaCry ransomware attacks, has helped galvanize interest in cybersecurity innovation in the U.K., says Internet of Business. Distinguished U.K. firms with cybersecurity services or initiatives include BT, PwC, Sophos, Darktrace, and SentryBay.

San Antonio, Texas

“Remember the Alamo” has been a major slogan in San Antonio (and Texas) for many years. But today, the city is also trying to be remembered as “Cyber City USA.”

“Cybersecurity as an industry is still in its infancy, and San Antonio is among the elite locations poised for growth,” according to a Deloitte notes. "Albeit lacking the youthful vibe of an Austin, San Antonio’s entrepreneurial strata, including cybersecurity, other information technology and biosciences, is sizable and growing.”

San Antonio’s significant military presence has helped stimulate a variety of cybersecurity initiatives in recent years, including the U.S. Air Force’s Cyber Command and the NSA’s Texas Cryptologic Center, which was previously a semiconductor fabrication plant, according to CS Monitor.

About 12 federal cybersecurity operations are based in San Antonio, a study by the San Antonio Economic Development Foundation (SAEDF) claimed. The SAEDF said that more than 80 cybersecurity-focused companies operate out of the city, providing 60,000 jobs in science and technology and 80,000 in the Department of Defense.

San Francisco, California, Bay area and Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is the world’s technology epicentre, going back to the 1939 founding by two Stanford University graduates of Hewlett-Packard in a Palo Alto garage.

Nowadays, Silicon Valley claims the top place in the current Cybersecurity 500 index too, with 126 companies that include such heavy hitters as Cisco, Symantec, Intel, Fortinet, SonicWall, McAfee, Barracuda Networks, Google, Oracle, Malwarebytes, VMware, Juniper Networks, Tanium, HPE (formerly Hewlett-Packard), Menlo Security, WhiteHat Security, and FICO.

“Silicon Valley is the hub for enterprise cybersecurity, where big businesses are coming up with better firewalls, because there are a lot of big tech businesses out there,” describes venture capitalist John Backus, as told by CS Monitor.

The area obtained so far more momentum in 2014 when the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation announced $45 million in grants for cybersecurity initiatives at Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley, as well as Boston’s MIT.

Meanwhile, in the past 15 years or so, San Francisco has evolved from a Silicon Valley bedroom area into a bigger hub for tech startups. The city has 31 companies on the Cybersecurity 500 index including OneLogin, Bay Dynamics, Appthority, Okta, CloudFlare, CloudPassage and Lookout.