Future Trends in Cybersecurity

What are the emerging trends in technology and security?

The cybersecurity industry is one of the fastest changing ones because of a combination of reasons – proliferation of attackers and their tactics, the increasing number and changing sensitivity of targets, new and more powerful vectors of attack being discovered regularly and so on.

One of the side effects of this chaotic state of cybersecurity is that it is often quite hard to predict trends that will shape it in the future, either short or long term one. Still, anyone with their ear to the ground can notice a few trends that will definitely stay with us for some time to come.

So, what are these?

By staying up to date with the emerging technological and cybersecurity trends you will be better equipped to deal with the innevitable new challenges.

Willingness to Learn

It has been more than a few years since cybersecurity experts started warning people in the world of business that everyone should learn at least the very basics of cybersecurity. For a long time, the majority of people not directly involved in IT neglected these warnings, but this has started to change and it is probably safe to say that this positive trend will continue. Executives and managers have finally become aware of the dangers data breaches pose for their companies and they are catching up.

More importantly, more and more companies are taking employee cybersecurity education and training an important part of their day-to-day practices, which will only make things better in the future.

In addition to this, executives and managers are finally starting to see the value of established cybersecurity standards and procedures that provide a layered protection to corporate systems – via third-party vendor verification, penetration testing, cybersecurity policies and so on.

At least that is one thing to be optimistic about when it comes to our corporate cybersecurity future.

Cyber Attacks as Business

The recent rise in ransomware attacks on various organizations around the world could be traced to more than a few reasons. One of those reasons has been the fact that cryptocurrencies allow hackers to receive ransoms without fearing getting caught during money transactions.

As a result of this, hacker groups are being organized like regular small businesses where people pull off ransomware and other kinds of attacks and getting what is, more or less, a regular paycheck for this.

As bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies become even more widespread than they are today, this will only become more prominent, with organized crime opening up entire "companies" with working hackers and half-hackers, hitting targets around the world and extorting money out of people.

Law enforcement agencies worldwide agree that the only way to stop this is to stop paying the attackers, but sometimes people do it because it is cheaper and more convenient.

One of the modern technological trends is creation of the Internet of Things, making a growing number of essential technology cyber-connected, increasing chances of serious cyber attacks that can literally affect the entire countries, as we have already unfortuanetyl seen in news.

The Danger of Internet of Things

This summer, a North American casino got its data breached via a connected fish tank which lacked any kind of protection and which allowed attackers further access to the casino's systems.

It is probably to this day the most damning example of the dangers that connected internet of things devices present and that have to be addressed sooner rather than later.

Unfortunately, no seems to be doing anything to this end. More and more people are purchasing devices which are (for some reason) connected to the internet and which rarely feature any kind of protection against intrusions by hackers and other kinds of attackers.

In the case of the casino, the story was more comedy than horror, but this can easily change as attacks like this happen to hospitals, power plants and other extremely sensitive organizations whose compromise might put lives in danger.

IoT devices will continue to be targeted and someone has to do something about this.

Cybersecurity and Politics

The saga of the Russian hacking of the American presidential election is only heating up, adding to the already sensitive issue of cybersecurity and worldwide politics. For years, there has been talk about Chinese government-backed hackers attacking western countries and vice-versa and, the way things are at the moment, this is something that will not end soon.

At the moment, the global cyber-attack games are still being played in gloves and we are still seeing a certain type of an equilibrium being maintained, either on purpose or accidentally, it is hard to say.

Unfortunately, this kind of equilibrium is unlikely to be sustainable in the long run and it is hard to see how its disruption will not have dramatic effects on global politics.

Let's imagine, for example, that a hacker group that is more or less directly linked to Republic of China's government does something as dramatic as shuts down the power grid for half of the United States. The word gets to the press and everyone finds out about it. It suddenly becomes very difficult for everyone to stay calm and do nothing openly.

It is a scary proposition and we do not like to make people paranoid, but we simply have to understand that cybersecurity and politics will stay interconnected for a long time to come in our future.

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