Cybersecurity trends for 2018

2017 was a year dominated by news of data breaches and new cybersecurity threats, from major hacks affecting companies like Equifax and Verizon to ransomware attacks such as the global WannaCry incident.

It stands to reason then that we will see more of the same in 2018, with corporations, governments, public bodies and even political campaigns all likely targets.

So, what exactly will 2018 have in store? McAfee Inc.’s recent threats predictions report identified five key cyber security trends to watch in 2018:

It is hard to argue with these predictions, particularly those concerning an “arms race” and the evolution of ransomware.

Those of us involved in cybersecurity solutions have been locked in an “arms race” with hackers and their like for many years, each side trading the advantage as new risks emerge and new solutions are developed.

But the growth of AI and machine learning, with tech giants like Amazon, Facebook and Google all getting in on the game, makes this the next area ripe for exploitation.

As McAfee’s report said: “Adversaries will certainly employ machine learning themselves to support their attacks, learning from defensive responses, seeking to disrupt detection models, and exploiting newly discovered vulnerabilities faster than defenders can patch them.”

It will be essential, therefore, for enterprises to become more strategic in their thinking and combine machine learning with human intellect and intuition to understand these new risks and anticipate where they might come from.

When it comes to the threat of ransomware, we should see the WannaCry attack as the beginning of this trend, the thin end of the wedge if you will.

The good thing about WannaCry is that it focused attention in this area and now lots of enterprises are proactively investing in making their systems and data secure so they don’t fall victim to future attacks.

Unfortunately, these types of incidents will become more sophisticated and more frequent because they have been shown to work; as long as some enterprises are paying to rescue their data the attacks will continue.

I think the increase in number and sophistication of cyberattacks in 2017 will encourage many enterprises to introduce more rigorous cybersecurity procedures in 2018, both to hinder the external threats and negate the risk of insider threats.