(Bloomberg Business) -- It's a seller's market for thecyber war's special forces.

Just ask Scott Davies, 30, who left a careersnooping on Australia's enemies in December for a similar gigat FireEye Inc. Or Brian Varner, 35, who swapped a job with theU.S. Department of Defense breaking into networks in the MiddleEast and other hot zones to be a security engineer at SymantecCorp.

"I have a blank canvas to paint whatever I want," says Varner,exulting at the lack of bureaucracy, not to mention hisability to work remotely from Florida.

All told, cybersecurity companies have hired hundreds ofex-government sleuths in recent years, capitalizing on theboom in business caused by hackers who stole more than 1billion records in attacks last year. The former spies,cyber-warriors and government-groomed hackers are becoming thecornerstone of the cybersecurity services industry, which isprojected to bring in more than $48 billion in revenue nextyear, up 41% from 2012, according to Gartner Inc.

"The people coming out of the military and the intelligencecommunity are really, really good," says Nir Zuk, co-founderof Palo Alto Networks Inc. and himself a former Israeli armycomputer hacker. "They know the attackers. They know how theywork."

FireEye has hired more than 100 ex-government hackers since2013, part of an international expansion that has cost more than $1billion, according to Chief Executive Officer Dave DeWalt. Symantechas increased the size of its security services division byalmost a third, to 500 people, in the past year.

Even smaller companies are snagging top talent. Lacoon MobileSecurity, a mobile-security startup that Check Point SoftwareTechnologies Ltd. agreed to buy this month, has hired 15 peoplefrom Israel's Unit 8200, said Michael Shaulov, a Lacoon co-founderwho, like Zuk, served in the Israeli military's computer-hackinggroup. The hires usually had five to eight competing offers andeach earned more than $100,000 straight out of the armed services,Shaulov said.

"There's a bit of a run on security talent," said Rob Owens, ananalyst at Pacific Crest Securities in Portland, Ore., who hascovered the industry for almost 20 years.

While CVs that include government hacking can superchargecareers, they're not a guarantee of safety -- or an easy fit incorporate America.

Bloomberg reported in February that JPMorgan Chase & Co. hasput two former Air Force colonels in its cybersecurity division andthat they clashed with the FBI, Secret Service and some members oftheir own staff about their insistence that Russia's intelligenceservices were behind a hacking attack on the bank last year. Lawenforcement has determined the attack was the work of ordinarycyber-criminals, and insiders said the clash was an example of howmilitary training can cause some to see state-sponsored attackswhere there are none.

At Palo Alto Networks, one of Zuk's recent hires was ChiefSecurity Officer Rick Howard, who spent more than two decades inthe U.S. Army. He last served as chief of the computer emergencyresponse team before entering the private sector. The $1 billionFireEye has spent on expansion is on top of the 2013 acquisition ofMandiant, a data-breachinvestigations company, which wasfounded by former Air Force special agent Kevin Mandia. That dealwas valued at $1.05 billion.

Some investors have been leery of the costs of the addedheadcount.

FireEye spends 48% of revenue on research and development, thehighest ratio of any of the 31 companies in the ISE Cyber SecurityIndex, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. The indexaverage is 18%.

While FireEye's shares fell from a high of $95.63 in Marchof last year to a low of $25.76 in October, in large part becauseof concerns about spending, the stock is up more than 30% this yearamid signs that DeWalt's pitch to investors is gaining sometraction.

"The costs are so much bigger now for the security industry thanthey ever were -- the threat landscape has changed so much," DeWaltsaid. "You can't just have a product. You need the people to matchit. There's no shiny bullet that does it all."

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