Upside Potential With Cybersecurity Stocks

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The ever-changing world of cybersecurity seems to only receive much publicity after a huge database has been hacked and millions of account numbers have been stolen.

It makes our blood run cold to be reminded that our identity and our most personal financial information can be "served up" by those who know how to steal from trusted online sources.

I'm going on record right here and right now: This is an enormous investment opportunity that few analysts and even fewer investors seem to be excited about.

As a result, this will be the first of two articles that will explore this topic and "serve up" some potentially lucrative investment ideas. Yes, I'll be naming names and highlighting the companies that have, in my opinion, the best upside potential.

At the close of the latest federal income-tax reporting year we had yet another shocking example of how seriously we have the take this ongoing threat. A fraud of immense proportions was executed in cyberspace by a group of identity thieves who targeted the storage servers of none other than the Internal Revenue Service.

According to an article at Investment U a full-blown cyberscam has shocked taxpayers and apparently the Treasury department. The article reported the following details:

"The scammers electronically file a false tax return with an ill-gotten, legitimate Social Security number, filing before the actual taxpayer and claiming a refund. When the real taxpayer submits his return electronically, he is then notified the return cannot be filed because there has been another return already submitted with the same Social Security number."

If that doesn't make you cringe, read on.

"Scared yet? Sounds like a pretty intricate techno-savvy scheme, doesn't it? Guess again. The Social Security numbers are typically purchased from someone with legitimate access to valid numbers. There's little that's high-tech about it -- it's just your basic lack of integrity with personal information. Once a valid Social Security number and name are acquired, the e-filing is fairly straightforward."

It speaks to the need to even screen tax-filings using cybersecurity filters that may require special PINs and Usernames to protect us.

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