Cybersecurity stocks and exchange traded funds are starting to run as the excitement around artificial intelligence broadens out beyond Nvidia and other tech giants. Since ChatGPT debuted late last year, investors have been looking for ways to play the AI craze. Cybersecurity is seen as one of the areas that could benefit , with the technological advancements making both threats and responses easier to create. “We believe cybersecurity concerns support demand for endpoint security, data loss prevention, and web filtering,” Macquarie analyst Frederick Havemeyer said in an April 18 note to clients. Those threats could range from creating to bypass security checks at banks to simply making everyday spam harder to detect, according to Macquarie. “We believe generative AI and LLMs have made it easier to craft more sophisticated phishing and scam emails, improving the effectiveness of campaigns and potentially increasing the difficulty of detecting and blocking such attacks. Although platforms such as ChatGPT have embedded guard rails to prevent users from using it to directly produce scam or phishing messages, large language models presently are nevertheless quite happy to edit and improve phishing messages that users feed into the platform,” the Macquarie note said. Cybersecurity stocks largely sat out the excitement around AI at the start of the year, but the group has started to gain traction in recent weeks. Since the end of April, the First Trust Nasdaq Cybersecurity ETF (CIBR) — the largest fund focused on the space — has risen nearly 11%. The Global X Cybersecurity ETF (BUG) has jumped almost 13%. BUG YTD mountain The BUG ETF has hit new highs for the year in recent weeks. BUG, which has an expense ratio of 0.51%, has benefited from a sharp rally in Zscaler after the cyber company raised its guidance on May 8 . Zscaler is now the fund’s top holding. However, fund flows have not yet risen along with the prices of the ETFs. The four biggest cyber ETFs have actually seen net negative flows combined over the past month, according to FactSet.
