2017 is the year of havoc for the information security with major breaches that make headlines on a day-to-day basis and cyber-attacks has been magnificently deployed on an extraordinary scale. None of the company seemed to be safe form the complex cyber-attacks.
As 2017year is ended, organizations are breathing a sigh of relief by seeing that all the relentless breaches have come to an end. On the contrary, the organizations are thinking whether 2018 will be any different from 2017? Take a look at the top cyber security trends that will be seen in 2018:
1. IoT Attacks on Rise
Currently, there are around 8 billion IoT devices that are connected to the Internet. According to a survey, it has been predicted that this number will rise up to 12 billion in the next year and 20 billion by 2020.
Source: IHS
Though, IoT devices are making unattractive targets for various common cyber security attacks, these can used effectively for DDoS attacks plus sources of distraction that are within the work space.
These devices will range from household equipment to the medical devices and whole of them host of security vulnerability. To counterpart the potential vulnerabilities, organizations will advance their data protection models by concentrating entirely on endpoints.
2. Increase in Ransonware Attacks
Ransomware is a growing threat from the last few years. In the year 2017, Ransomware attacks gained much more public awareness like WannaCry attacks. According to a recent survey, Ransomware attacks are likely to become more sophisticated in 2018 targeting high net worth corporations and individuals. Actually, these attacks are rising by 350% every year with an attack on the businesses foreseen every 14 seconds by 2019.
3. Artificial Intelligence
Attackers will increase theirutilization of artificial intelligence in 2018, consolidating it the existing strategies to expand their scope of attack. Machine learning can possibly enhance social engineering and make the phishing attacks more difficult to identify by gathering and combining more data than a human can do. By utilizing the AI accurately, it can likewise expand the viability of utilizing weak or stolen credentials on the increasing number of connected devices. It enables the attackers to scan for the vulnerabilities, boost the speed of attacks and creating shorter time between the discovery and misuse.
4. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR)
The coming year 2018 will undeniably be the year of GDPR. It is a legislation that fuses cyber security and personal privacy.
It is set to be a standard by which the other data protection legislations will be judged and its enforcement and implementation will decide the future of data protection in a legal perspective.
5. Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) Attacks
Convicts will target medium and large size businesses with constant DDoS attacks as ransonware attacks are less popular. The business influence and financial enticements are bigger, though attacks can be launched alongside smaller amount of businesses instantaneously. Anti-DDoS technology processes remain exorbitant for most of SME businesses.
6. Wi-Fi Exploitations
We presume to see rise in hijacking of accounts or else of complete networks via exploited or false Wi-Fi networks. Wi-Fi has constantly been fundamentally insecure. Today, WiFi is used across the businesses that earlier was not prevalent. Most businesses use Wi-Fi as primary method of networking devices and unfortunately, most of the devices do not possess physical docks to be wired to a network.
[Related Read: How Mobile Application Testing Prevents Future Attacks By Predicting The Behavior Of Attackers]
7. More and More Phishing Attacks
Phishing is the effort to attain sensitive data, like usernames, passwords and credit card particulars, often for the malicious reasons by disguising as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.
In the year 2017, the world’s most popular email service, Gmail was subjected as a major phishing scheme that involved the usage of Google Docs. This might caught unawareness and Google had to move with speed to patch up the things. In 2018, increasing reported examples of similar scams are reported, as this is a tried and tested method and people continually fall for it.
8. Blockchain
With Bitcoin striking all-time high and Ethereum bursting on the scene, blockchain – the technology is the substance to them both is the entire wrath now.
But blockchain is over and above the backbone to cryptocurrencies, it has major applications in the cyber security. It offers cryptography which is both secured and theoretically absolute due its dispersed nature.
9. Cloud 2.0 Becomes the Norm
The cloud has moved further the phases of experimentation into mass adoption, with organizations implementing cloud-only practices, efficiently reinforcing the cloud technology place in majority. Multi-cloud architecture models, which include both the public and private clouds, plus various providers for specific requirements have been set to become the norm in 2018.
10. Smartphones
We expect to see that the advent of smartphones will breach and exploits in 2018. These devices can now link into secure networks, email servers and even the payment system as card processing tool on regular basis. The fact is that there are several versions of open-source Android operating systems, which means that there is an enormously high rate of malware development.
11. From DevOps to DevSecOps
Keeping up with the ever-growing requirement for delivering the software systems at a high pace, the model of DevOps has occurred and been actively practiced from the past year.
Building the security equivalent to application development at the same speed is critical for the overall success. So, in 2018 the focus will move from DevOps to DevSecOps.
12. Data Aggregators will become Prime Target for Data Theft
With the Equifax data breach, data aggregators will become the golden goose cyber criminals. Collecting huge amount of data, which is constantly arriving and leaving their systems, data aggregators experience difficult challenges in acquiring the data. From employee carelessness to breaches and weak authorization practices, attackers have ample of potential vulnerabilities to exploit and discover.
End Words
As the year 2017 is ended, it has provides us the preface of the 2018. Therefore, the only thing that you can save your businesses from rapid-evolving cyber-attacks is more sophisticated approach to counter them and keep a close eye on the cyber security dispositions.
Author Bio: Claire Mackerras is a Senior QA Engineer & Editor associated with Bugraptors. A CMMi5 certified company with extensive experience as a third party testing vendor in US. She is passionate toward writing on technological trends for manual & automation software testing. She likes to share her knowledge, for the readers who are interested in exploring testing tact’s and trends.
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