/industry-wired/media/agency_attachments/2024/12/04/2024-12-04t130344212z-iw-new.png)
/industry-wired/media/agency_attachments/2024/12/04/2024-12-04t130332454z-iw-new.jpg)
/industry-wired/media/post_attachments/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Cyber-Security-scaled.jpeg)
Consider cybersecurity and data privacy as a chessboard where defenders and hackers face each other at an intense battle. Defenders are shown the exit door with a new ransomware attack plotted every 14 seconds; which will escalate one in every 11 seconds by 2021. To combat this menace, the cybersecurity marketplace has expanded to US$100 billion in annual purchases of software, hardware, and related cybersecurity professional services growing at a CAGR of 12%, as reported by Gartner. Ironically, despite the growing investments in cybersecurity, the public and private sectors are not keeping pace with the US$4.2 trillion annual setbacks reported in global fraud, theft, and data breach damages caused by cyberattacks. A dangerous breach which is predicted to exceed US$6 trillion by 2021. Here are the 10 Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Predictions that modern enterprises need to be cautious about in the 21st Century-
- Insider Threat and Cyber Attacks
With every improvement in the enterprise cyber defense structure like multifactor authentication, zero trust architecture, monitoring, detection, and incident response; cyber-attackers brace themselves to by-pass all of these security measures gaining restricted-access to valuable intellectual property and key data assets.
- Mobile Devices will become Vulnerable
The number of mobile users sharply continues to see an upward trend, so does the amount of data stored in them. No wonder that mobile devices continue to remain as a vulnerable data breach threat. Hackers can override traditional secure email gateways, which are programmed to block phishing emails for protecting corporate emails on the mobile to steal business data.
- IoT Cyber-Attacks
According to Symantec, the number of Internet of Things (IoT) connected devices is estimated to rapidly increase from 10 billion devices in 2017 to over 26 billion devices by the end of 2020. With this tremendous increase in the number of IoT connected devices, a dramatic increase in the number of cyber-attacks on IoT connected devices, especially medical devices will be no-surprising.
- Global Threats
Nation-state activity will become a more significant threat in the coming years. Besides, enterprise organizations, particularly the highly visible brands closely associated with target countries are at risk. For instance, visibly American companies, such as McDonald's, Coca-Cola, and Starbucks, are the potential targets.
- Cloud Under Scrutiny
The ongoing pandemic has left more than half of an enterprise's workforce outside the corporate data center. Companies are responding to the increased reliance on cloud support by adding more cloud security teams, budgets, and architectures to their business continuity initiatives.
- The Complex Landscape of Cybersecurity and Data Privacy Regulatory Requirements
Cybersecurity and data privacy laws, regulations, standards, and contractual requirements, are becoming complicated, leading to a rise in potential civil and criminal penalties for non-compliance. This includes the Payment Card Industry (PCI), Data Security Standard (DSS), the New York Department of Financial Services (NYDFS), Cybersecurity requirements for financial institutions, and the California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA), National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Cybersecurity Risk Management Framework (RMF), European Union (EU), General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), and ISO 27001 Information Security Standard, just to name a few.
- Securing Supply Chains
Third-party and supply chain attacks will intensify in the 21st century. Most enterprise cybersecurity specialists might have written off supply chain attacks as an outlier, but they need to revisit the legacy supply chain models that are prone to a data breach. The application of blockchain and IoT to the supply chain only increases this threat.
- Business Email Compromise (BEC) Attacks
During the past 18 months, the use of socially engineered cyber impersonation attacks and Business Email Compromise (BEC) attacks have grown exponentially. These attacks specifically target the senior executives working in both government agencies and the private sector to redirect payments to cyber-attackers.
- 5G Security Compromises
The rollout of the next-generation high-speed mobile internet, 5G network will further increase IoT-based attacks. Considering the relatively new and complex architecture of 5G, it would require a higher level of security which many cloud vendors will find it difficult to secure. This leaves the 5G network as a blind spot which the hackers might leverage to sneak in malware and steal large volumes of SaaS data at breakneck speed.