You know you have become a dinosaur when you keep using outdated terminology. Everybody else uses the new buzz word, but you just find it odd. But someday it will creep also into your active vocabulary. Then I will use the tag cyber something, like stating that I work with cyber-physical systems.

But am I even right about the emergence of new terms? I am going to ask Google Trends!

I have always called it IT Security, now it is Cyber Security. I know there are articles written about the difference between Cyber Security and IT Security. However, when I read about Those 10 Important Things in Cyber Security, I see that the term is often used as a 1:1 replacement of what had been called IT Security. And even if you insist on them being different fields, the following Google Trends result would at least show that one has become more interesting to internet users.

I am also adding Infosec which I feel is also more ‘modern’ – or maybe only used specifically by community insiders.

Link: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=Cyber%20Security,IT%20Security,Infosec

So Cyber Security is on the rise, but IT Security does is not yet on a decline. Infosec is less popular – and what about these spikes?

Link: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today 5-y&q=Infosec

This not what I expected – a sharp peak at the beginning of every June! This pattern rather reminds of searching for terms related to heating systems: Searches for heat pump peak in New Zealand every July – for obvious reasons. (Although it is interesting why only in NZ – I only zoomed in on NZ as it was the top region in the worldwide search on heat pump… But I digress!)

So I guess the spike is caused by one of the famous big IT Security Infosec conferences? Which one? I could not track it down unambiguously!

What about the non-abbreviated term – Information Security. Does it exhibit the same pattern?

Link: https://trends.google.at/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=Infosec,Information%20Security

Not at all. There is one negative spike in week 51 every year, and this pattern rather reminds me of the ‘holiday pattern’ I see in our websites’ statistics. Maybe that’s the one week in a year when also IT security Infosec people are on vacation?

Finally I want to cross-check the Cyber Physical and The Cyber in general:

Cyber Physical is not mainstream enough to show a trend…

Link: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=Cyber%20Physical

… and Cyber itself is again not at all what I expected!

Link: https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%205-y&q=Cyber

Mid of December every year we all search the The Cyber! Do the hackers attack every year when we are busy with shopping for presents or getting That Important Project done before End of Calendar Year?

Again I fail to google that one and only Cyber event in December – or maybe these spikes are all about Google bugs!

Epilogue / user manual: Don’t click on these links too often!