19 Jul Humans On The Internet Will Triple From 2015 To 2022 And Hit 6 Billion

90 percent of the human population, aged 6 years and older, will be online by 2030

– Steve Morgan, Editor-in-Chief

Sausalito, Calif. – Jul. 18, 2019

It’s a common question: How many people are on the Internet? Or, more important, how many people are at risk of being cyber attacked?

To answer: The number of people that are online at a given point in time.

So, exactly how many people are online today — and what will that look like over the next 5 to 10 years?

In 2019, there are more than 4.4 billion users online.

We first answered this question exactly one year ago. On July 18, 2018, Internet traffic was pushing nearly 3 billion users (which was roughly 51 percent of the total number of people with Internet access).

Going further back in time, in 2015 there were 2 billion people online.

Looking ahead, Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that there will be 6 billion Internet users by 2022 (75 percent of the projected world population of 8 billion) — and more than 7.5 billion Internet users by 2030 (90 percent of the projected world population of 8.5 billion, 6 years of age and older).

The number of people connected to the Internet, not to mention the number of Things (IoT devices), is staggering.

A growing corps of cyber fighters will be needed to protect the world’s citizens from cybercrime, which is predicted to reach $6 trillion annually by 2021, up from $3 trillion in 2015. But, we’ve got a real numbers problem with that.

Cybersecurity Ventures predicts that there will be 3.5 million unfilled cybersecurity jobs by 2021, up from 1 million in 2014.

This challenge has created a cybersecurity market that will be worth $1 trillion between 2017 and 2021 (5 year cumulative spending on cybersecurity products and services).

It’s not all gloom and doom. Cybercrime is a natural outgrowth of the expanding cyberattack surface, and it should be expected. A realistic view of the risks and threats we face will help organizations and consumers to do a better job of protecting themselves.

Here’s a list of the 100 largest countries, by population, with the approximate percentage of people connected to the Internet:

* All figures are approximate. Publicly available data sources include Wikipedia, Internet World Stats, Statista, and others.

For more cybercrime and cybersecurity facts, figures, predictions, and statistics, go to the 2019 Cybersecurity Almanac, which is co-published by Cisco and Cybersecurity Ventures.

– Steve Morgan is founder and Editor-in-Chief at Cybersecurity Ventures.

Go here to read all of my blogs and articles covering cybersecurity. Go here to send me story tips, feedback and suggestions.

– Connor Morgan, a Cybercrime Magazine summer intern, contributed to this list.