6 Information Security Predictions for the Year 2020

Entering into the year 2020, the ‘main thing’ while navigating the technology world is ‘Cyber Security.’ Innovations exploding in different areas of life and industries are giving rise to various challenges, among which cybersecurity is at the top of the list. With the advent of technological advancements such as Artificial Intelligence, 5G, quantum computing, IoT (Internet of Things), autonomous vehicles, and cloud, the need for cybersecurity is much more than before. Cybersecurity plays a vital role in presidential elections, global cyberwar, personal data privacy, and protection, issue of implementation of identity verification and authentication, and fixing cyberattacks. The year ahead raises many good and bad questions highlighting cybersecurity strategies. The only hack is to stay one step ahead of cybercriminals, run with speed ten times faster.

Ransomware attacks and malicious executable injections compromise highly sensitive information of billions and cost organizations much more than it takes for security installations. The year 2020 highlights similar challenges. The reasons being hackers getting innovative day by day, the race of technology adoption is never-ending. Keeping in mind this view, cybersecurity threats prediction for 2020 are the following:

1. Phishing attacks will Continue

Tech experts predict the year 2020 again a struggle for companies against phishing attacks. These attacks are taking several forms from spear (email) phishing scams to clone phishing.

In a report by Europol, Steven Wilson, the head of Europol’s European Cybercrime Centre says, Spear phishing is a major enabler of some of the most serious forms of cybercrime, especially ransomware, and can cause real harm to European citizens and organizations. We can only tackle a threat of this scale effectively by working closely with key partners from across the industry. The EC3 Advisory Groups and this report are a reflection of our ongoing cooperation to tackle the threat from cybercrime.”

Moreover, many other enterprises are predicted to be under the threat of phishing scams. Especially online businesses providing online facilities globally will be prone to various forms of phishing attacks in 2020.

2. Cyber attacks on Small and Medium-sized Enterprises

Large firms have taken in place dynamic security measures that limit the access of fraudsters into confidential databases and programs. Whereas, small and medium-sized enterprises are forecasted to be under the threat of cyberattacks in the year 2020. There is a need for digital solutions in traditional SMEs to combat online frauds and payment scams in the year coming forward.

SMEs across the world are getting digital to transform the industry by using innovative technologies that contribute to the elimination of identity theft, data breaches, account takeover, and phishing attacks. Moreover, malware injection and buffer overflow attacks residing in the subset of cyberattacks need to address soon. The product planning director at the Sharp UK, Jason Cort, also agrees to it by identifying a pitfall when multiple printers connect. He says, "While the understanding of cybersecurity is on the rise, there are still a significant number of small to medium-sized businesses that need to take up the mantle. Too many think “it won’t happen to me, I’m too small,” which is dangerous and naïve.” This illustrates that whether it is a small or large business owner, cybersecurity is a concern for all of them. Identification of possible threats that can spoil your businesses should immediately be taken into consideration other taking business scope light and overlooking the security measures.

3. AI cybersecurity attacks are getting Smarter

Hackers are all set for taking in place innovative hacks based on Artificial Intelligent algorithms with a blend of machine learning as the underlying technology to use weapons against digital solutions companies are using.AI is used to make data breach easy. It is used to exploit vulnerabilities in the systems and, after finding a loophole, perform malicious activities. Bots are programs that are used for credential stuffing, in which various combinations of username and passwords are used to find out the correct combination and takeover the online user account. In the same way, bots start learning. The ones that are used for data breaches are trained using AI technology, and in the next step, they perform even better than before.

4. Facial Recognition technology will be Improving

Facial recognition technology, a savior of various online industries, helps in secure payments, and authorized access over user accounts and confidential databases. With time, an apparent change is seen in the year 2019, which is not going to stop there. Facial recognition technology, over time, is feeding innovative algorithms for better detection and bypassing the fraudulent attempts by online hackers. Facial recognition technology is used in various industries, for example, online payments, industrial as well as an organizational level such as the finance industry and e-commerce. GooglePay recently launched facial recognition to ensure secure payments over the network. The addition in betterment will continue in the year 2020.

5. AI-based Security Integration

Neural networks today are used in various tech companies. Using AI and well-trained neural network models, manual processes are transformed with AI models that are efficient and less time-consuming. The year 2020 is predicted to be deepening the roots of AI-based security models that can self-heal and ensure data security.AI models will be trained with considerable data to perform effectively in the real-world. They would have the power of updating their training sets at the same time when stepping into the real-world. Misconfiguration of firewalls can also be reduced with AI-based models in 2020 by training them over data that help differentiate between malicious and honest traffic of nodes. This would contribute to the betterment of cybersecurity in 2020.

6. Rise in Cloud Computing Attacks

In the year 2020, a massive spike in cloud computing attacks will be seen. Cloud, in which the bulk of data is stored and applications are using, updating, and editing data in real-time could be prone to a massive attack. The year 2019 was also a target of various data breaches that compromised data of millions of customers that belonged to well-renowned companies.The year 2020 will be following the same flow, and according to prediction, 2020 is going to face much bigger cyberattacks.

References:

https://www.helpnetsecurity.com/2019/11/04/spear-phishing-eu/ https://www.information-age.com/predictions-for-cyber-security-2020-123486362/ https://www.databreaches.net/europol-publishes-law-enforcement-and-industry-report-on-spear-phishing/