Cybersecurity attacks and data breaches are more common and dangerous than ever. And talk about costly: IBM estimated the average financial loss of a data breach last year at $3.86 million. This year, IBM grew that number to astounding $3.92 million per breath.
Cyber attacks and data breaches cause such losses to the global economy that the World Economic Forum’s 2019 Global Risks Report lists them as the fourth and fifth most serious global risks currently. According to this report by Cybersecurity Ventures, ransomware damages will amount to more than $11.5 billion in 2019.
Moreover, the report estimates that, on average, every 14 seconds a company will be attacked by ransomware. And it predicts that by 2021, the total global cost of cybercrimes will be around $6 trillion per year. And that’s not even counting the nearly incalculable cost to business reputations around the world.
That’s why it’s more important than ever for organizations to understand their own states of cybersecurity readiness.
To help, I pulled together this year’s top five cybersecurity threats and the corresponding technologies you need to deal with them.
The Threats
Ransomware
Ransomware is a form of malware attackers use to extort money from victims, typically by taking control of their computing systems and blocking their access to files and settings via encryption. To release such blocks, victims must pay the attacker a ransom fee, usually in the form of cryptocurrency like Bitcoin, so that they can gain access to the decryption key they need to unlock the files. Ransomware has been around for ages, but it is a lot more common these days due to the use of cryptocurrency, which allows attackers to maintain their anonymity.
Cryptojacking
Cryptojacking, also known as cryptomining, is the use of a victim’s computer to mine for cryptocurrency. Cryptojackers use the same techniques that attackers use for ransomware: they encrypt the targeted system. In traditional ransomware, at this stage, the user would pay a ransom fee for the decryption key. However, in cryptojacking, the attacker keeps the system encrypted for as long as possible and uses it to mine for cryptocurrency.
Internet of Things (IoT) device threats
Nowadays, the world is becoming ever more connected with each passing day, as companies develop newer technologies to bring quality-of-life improvements with the aid of IoT devices. However, as often happens with cybersecurity, the more a technology is connected, the more it is vulnerable to cyberattacks.
Data breaches
A data breach happens when an unauthorized party takes advantage of a vulnerability to gain access to sensitive or valuable data such as user and credit card information, usernames and passwords. Data breaches are not a new threat by any means. However, in 2019, we have witnessed some of the biggest data breaches ever.
Mobile malware
People typically give less attention to the security status of their mobile devices, which makes them a prime target for cyber attacks. While Many organizations adopt Mobile Device Management (MDM) solutions, this approach is not so popular as it tends to raise a lot of privacy concerns from employees.
The biggest concern in terms of mobile device vulnerabilities is older software. This is mostly an Android issue, as only around 10% of all devices that run the Google operating system use the latest software version.
The Tools
The cybersecurity industry is actively trying to combat cyberthreats, which leads to the development of many emerging cybersecurity technologies. Here are the top five.
Deep learning
Deep Learning (DL), a subset of Artificial Intelligence (AI), is widely used for a variety of fields including cybersecurity. Many security tools, such as Security, Orchestration, Automation, and Response (SOAR) make use of DL to enhance their capabilities. Deep learning can help cybersecurity teams identify and deal with many advanced threats such as Advanced Persistent Threats (APT) attacks.
Advanced authentication
With all the advances in cybercrime techniques and technologies, the most common way to execute cyberattacks is by leveraging insecure usernames and passwords. Nowadays, many companies are finding more secure ways for users to log-in without requiring to type in passwords. For example, Google started to use fingerprint authentication for their accounts. Intel has also found another way, using hardware authentication, to test several hardware factors, which they bake directly into computer hardware to validate user identities.
Data loss prevention
Data Loss Prevention (DLP) is a class of tools designed to protect organizations against the loss of valuable and sensitive data. To do so, DLP tools detect, monitor and block potential threats.
User behavior analytics
The goal of User Behavior Analytics (UBA) is to differentiate between legitimate users behaviors and illegitimate user behaviors. Once UBA detects an anomaly, it alerts the security teams to take action against the threat.
Cloud tech
The cloud is one of the most rapidly growing technologies today. For many small companies and startups, the security that the cloud offers is much superior to what they could establish in-house, which makes the cloud a great solution.
The Bottom Line
While cybersecurity threats continue to grow both more numerous and sophisticated, organizations around the world are hard at work developing more secure defenses. If you combine a variety of tools and practices to secure your network and data, you should be able to reasonably fend off the more devastating forms of cyberattacks and mitigate the damage in the event a breach does occur.
However, given that the cybersecurity landscape is constantly evolving, it is imperative to keep track of developments so you can keep up with emerging threats and apply the relevant solutions in time.
For aNewDomain, I’m Gilad David Maayan.
Cover image: Pexels
