As a cyber security threats continue to evolve, here are our top 5 Cyber-Security predictions for 2019
First major GDPR fines
Regulatory fines for non-compliance with the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation are much higher than under the UK’s Data Protection Act 1998. GDPR introduced fines of up to 4% of annual global turnover of €20 million – whichever is greater.
Marriott Hotel filed a statement with US regulators in December 2018 that the breach was detected on its guests’ database on or before 10 September, but could affect records going back to 2014. The data breach looks set to trigger the first significant fine to a brand under GDPR rules.
100 million+ records stolen from > 5 firms
In November 2018, Uber was fined £385,000 for failing to protect customers’ personal information during a cyber attacks. The records of almost 82,000 drivers based in the UK were taken.
Marriott lost approximately 327 million guest profiles. Given the nature of attacks of all sizes due to an increase in 2019, reaching 100m+ records across 5 businesses should be easy!
Cyberwar intensifies and leads to political influences for firms like Kaspersky and Huawei
American officials have briefed their counterparts in countries like Germany, Italy and Japan about what they argue are potential cyber security risks around the likes of Huawei technology and Chinese government influence embedded within.
Russian cyber security firm Kaspersky Lab has begun to move aspects of its core business away from the jurisdiction of the Russian intelligence services to the private haven of Zurich in Switzerland as it works to prove itself deserving of customers’ trust in the US and UK following accusations of links to Russian intelligence.
Social engineering (phising) spikes
Cyber-criminals are increasingly turning to social engineering attacks that exploit the human attack surface to evade existing safeguards and gain entry to corporate networks.
These evolving threats don’t directly target the device, the software, or the network. The primary target is the employee behind the browser. In other words, the most vulnerable link in the chain is the end-user.
Bitcoin theft drops
2018 saw a big year for cryptocurrencies, with plenty of hype in Q4. There were a large number of cryptocurrency thefts in 2018, as well as the hacking of the crypto-exchange itself being hacked.
With its use as a method of payment declining steadily, on top of a number of delayed launches by new currencies, the massive dip in value that cryptocurrencies have taken of late will in turn reduce the appeal of theft by hackers in 2019.
