3 Cybersecurity Trends to Watch for in 2017

Featured article by Calvin Paige, Independent Technology Author

Although the internet is one of the greatest game changers of the 20th century, it comes with its own share of issues. Security breaches have continued to plague the cyberspace, leading to losses of billions of dollars. In fact, according to Forbes, cybercrime is expected to have cost the US economy $2 trillion by 2019. And what’s more frightening is that there appears to be no definite solution to cybercrime in sight. In fact, the advent of the IoT is expected to make cybersecurity even more difficult to enforce.

Here are some of the cybersecurity trends you should watch out for in 2017.

Accessibility to Hacking Software

Long are the days when hackers needed to have impeccable knowledge in programming to carry out attacks. There is currently an influx of hacking tools that can be bought easily on the internet by anyone interested and the money to buy. In addition, these tools are user friendly and require very little IT knowledge to use. This means that the number of cyber criminals is expected to rise rapidly in 2017, and implies that people who are disgruntled for one reason or the other can easily initiate a DOS attack against virtually any organization. This could eventually lead to billions of dollars in losses and important data breaches which could compromise the security of whole countries.

IoT Devices will be Targeted

The advent of the IoT was music to many people’s ears in the IT community; and with good reason. IoT is set to take the world of automation to an all-new level. However, it does come with its share of downsides. The IoT will open up a lot of connection points which can be targeted easily by hackers. Hackers are expected to take advantage of this and target devices on these networks. In fact, a report by analysts at Gartner predicts that 25 percent of all cybercrime by 2020 will be targeting the IoT. However, cyber security experts are developing systems that can protect IoT networks. One example is the SIEM intrusion detection system for security operations centers, which monitors any peculiarity within IoT networks to detect security breaches.

Changing Tactics

Hackers are becoming smarter and even harder to detect. The current trend in hacking is shifting from the direct theft of data to data manipulation where data is manipulated to lower its credibility. Since the data is not missing, it becomes very difficult to suspect that you’re under attack. By the time you finally realize that you’ve been hacked, it might be too late to retrieve the compromised data, making counteracting and tracing these types of attacks very difficult.

Conclusion

While we would all love to be optimistic, the future looks pretty unnerving for cyber security. The number of attacks is expected to rise, especially now that hacking has been greatly democratized. The IoT has also provided numerous soft spots for hackers, and cybercrime is becoming more sophisticated than ever before. Fortunately, cyber risk insurance policies are expected to rise to take some of these risks from victims. Anyone guarding valuable assets or information would be wise to start looking for cyber insurance as safety is never guaranteed, more so now than ever.