Is it 'Cybersecurity' or 'Cyber Security'?

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Funny story: our website started out as Cybersecurity Resources for Women, and we later changed it to Cyber Security Resources for Women after doing some googling. That meant we had to change our website logo and wording all throughout the site. So which one is it? Should you be using ‘cybersecurity‘ or ‘cyber security’ to be on the same page as your security colleagues and to maintain your credibility?

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What the Trends Tell Us

Have you ever used Google Trends before? It’s kind of pretty awesome. It’s Google’s free tool that lets you look up how often specific search terms have been typed into their search engine from all over the globe going as far back as 2004! And the trends generated by this tool are a good indicator of a search term’s popularity over time as Google has been the largest and most popular search engine since what feels like the dawn of time.

So when we do a search of ‘cyber security’ vs ‘cybersecurity’ for the past five years, this is what we see:

Looking at the graph above, we see that both terms have grown in popularity over the past half decade – hopefully signaling that security is ever increasingly at the forefront of everyone’s minds. But aside from that, we also see that ‘cyber security’ (in blue) is more popular in use worldwide than ‘cybersecurity’ (in red).

And we can see that Spain, France, and Poland favor the concatenated ‘cybersecurity’ while the rest of the world prefers to break it up into two words:

When focusing in on usage in the United States for the past five years, we see that ‘cyber security’ is searched more often. However, there is less of a gap in usage between the two terms, likely meaning they are often interchangeably used:

And looking at a regional breakdown in the U.S., the District of Columbia seems to heavily prefer the usage of ‘cybersecurity.’ So if you’re team ‘cybersecurity,’ D.C. people are your people!

If we go by global popularity, ‘cyber security’ wins out as the term to use if you want to be on the same page as most of the world. But that’s according to Google search terms. What about usage among well-known security organizations?

Before You Make the Switch

There are several organizations considered as the top experts in the security community, who use ‘cybersecurity’ instead of ‘cyber security’ directly in their organization name or throughout their website, such as:

Orgs Using ‘Cyber Security’ instead of ‘Cybersecurity’

Despite the popularized use of the combined ‘cybersecurity,’ there are also some notable organizations using ‘cyber security’ in their name, branding, or communication materials, such as:

Famous Orgs That Use Both

There are a few orgs with high visibility in the security industry that straddle the fence and vacillate between the use of ‘cyber security’ and ‘cybersecurity’ throughout their communications – esteemed organizations, like:

A Third Variation

If you’re still unsure as to which version of the word to use, there’s yet a third option: ‘CyberSecurity.’ The ‘S’ is capitalized to distinguish between the words ‘cyber’ and ‘security’ while still keeping the two words combined, as seen with:

So Which Should You Use?

The correct answer is: it’s up to you. While there is a preference worldwide for ‘cyber security’ in usage (according to Google’s data), both terms are perfectly acceptable. And if you’re ever in doubt, just follow the lead of whichever organization or expert you’re trying to communicate with.

But if you want our opinion, we think ‘cyber security’ is a tad bit easier on the eyes and keeps things consistent as the word ‘cyber’ is often paired up with various other words to emphasize their digital aspect. By using ‘cyber’ separately, it makes it easier to read these words without them looking like jumbled run-ons. So that’s what we’re sticking with! (For now…)

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Is it ‘Cybersecurity’ or ‘Cyber Security’?