An analysis of GlobalData’s Cybersecurity Influencer Platform, which tracks more than 300 leading industry experts and their discussions pertaining to the emerging trends, pain areas, new fields of innovation and other popular areas on Twitter, has revealed Bob Carver, Principal – Cybersecurity Threat Intelligence and Analytics at Verizon, as the top cybersecurity influencer during the first quarter (Q1) of 2020. Carver largely shares updates on cybersecurity, IoT and risk management.

Lesley Carhart emerged as the next top influencer among the cybersecurity experts with an influencer score of 97. Carhart is Principal Incident Responder at the industrial cyber security company Dragos, Inc. She specializes in information security, with a key focus on incident response to nation-state adversary attacks. She is followed by Swift on Security, the author of DecentSecurity.com, and GotPhish.com with an influencer score of 87.

Information security, cyberattack and ransomware were the most mentioned trends among the cybersecurity influencer discussions on Twitter during the period.

Smitarani Tripathy, Influencer Analyst at GlobalData, comments: “Influencer conversations related to information security with a major focus on data security grew by 10% in Q1 2021, compared to the previous quarter, majorly due to increase in data breach activities.”

Among companies, GitHub, Amazon.com (Amazon) and Cisco Systems emerged as the most mentioned companies among cybersecurity influencer discussions on Twitter during Q1 2021.

The discussions related to GitHub spiked as Official PHP Git server targeted in attempt to bury malware in code base. On 23 March, hackers used the name of the creator and developer to compromise the official PHP Git Server and put a backdoor in the source. Amazon emerged as another most mentioned company, led by surge in discussions when the company dismisses the security-threat claims by researchers that Alexa ‘skills’ can bypass security vetting process.