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Cybersecurity in the News, 2019–2026: Attention, Geography and Tone of Global Cybersecurity Coverage, and How It Compares with Research and Invention

Year: 2026
Type: article
Abstract: We measure how cybersecurity was covered in a global news index from January 2019 to July 2026, using 404,459 de-duplicated articles about cybersecurity, cyberattacks, ransomware and data breaches, and set that coverage beside 37,051 research papers and 2,792 patent families on the same subject. Six results stand out: Rising attention. Cybersecurity's share of news rose 1.42-fold, from 20.52 articles per 10,000 in 2019 to 29.22 in 2025. The largest annual step came in 2021, a rise of 37.7%. Event months. May 2021, the month of the Colonial Pipeline ransomware attack, reached 39.21 per 10,000. July 2024, the month of the CrowdStrike-related IT outages, reached 44.68, the highest reliable monthly value. Geography. The United Kingdom's share of located cybersecurity news is 1.74 times its share of all news. The United States, the largest source (41.69%), is slightly under-represented at 0.86, and India at 0.66. Among countries with at least a thousand located articles, Singapore (3.45), Israel (2.19) and the United Arab Emirates (1.98) are the most over-represented; North Korea, on a small baseline, reaches 17.06. Within India, Karnataka (3.04) and Telangana (2.95) lead; within the United States, Maine (3.73), Virginia (3.06) and Nevada (2.65), once three place-tagging artefacts are set aside. Tone and urgency. From January 2023 to July 2026, 43.8% of cybersecurity articles are negative in tone (all news: 33.6%), yet 55.5% are positive, close to the 56.8% of all news. 76.7% are rated critical priority (all news: 42.6%). Shifting attention. Between 2023 and 2025, cybersecurity's share of the United Kingdom's news rose 1.25 times and Ghana's 1.9 times, while it fell most in Ireland, Canada and Israel, and also fell in the United States. Research and invention. Cybersecurity papers grew from 1.39 to 12.2 per 10,000 papers between 2015 and 2025 (8.8-fold). Patent families published per year grew 13.8-fold from 2015 to 2024, from a small base, and the United States office held 50.1% of family–office filings.
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23446385
Language: English
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7222875389
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