Its a new year, which means more innovation and technology and threats to come.Therefore it is a good time to have a look at what to expect from Cyber Security in 2020.
Ransomware will continue to be on a rapid increase, with exploitation becoming more complex to evade detection, making it more difficult to reverse, and gain the most amount of profit in a short space of time. The ransomware epidemic is a game of cat and mouse, whereby the developers aim to outrun the researchers, and exploit as many victims as possible before their encryption is cracked.
Next on the list is phishing, which is becoming more complex with each year. Expect for phishing attacks to become harder to detect and appear more legitimate. However, the standard rule of thumb applies, which is to avoid suspicious links at all times and, when in doubt, manually browse to the website to be sure that the webpage you visit is legitimate. Be vigilant with the emails you receive and remember that it is always best to confirm with the sender rather than risk your personal or company data to finish a task quickly.
Finally, we have Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. This is a relatively new topic for Cyber Security, but the concept lies primarily within security analysis, and improving the accuracy when identifying security incidents. It is likely that we will see Machine Learning & AI combined with our standard security processes, usually integrated within software, to identify threats more efficiently.
Overall, many of the highest threats remain the same, and the main objective is to improve the sophistication and overall effectiveness of existing detection technologies to prevent these attacks from developing in an uncontrolled manner. Ransomware, in particular, is one where researchers must work hard to continuously mitigate the threat and stay ahead of the game.