AT&T expects more cybersecurity threats for the new year
Editor’s Note: With 2016 now upon us, RCR Wireless News has gathered predictions from leading industry analysts and executives on what they expect to see in the new year.
In 2014, businesses suffered nearly 43 million known security incidents – a 48% increase compared to 2013. In 2015, AT&T released its first Cybersecurity Insights Report, drawing upon decades of experience operating one of the largest global IP networks.
AT&T’s report revealed a 62% increase in the number of times distributed denial of service attacks occurred over the past 2 years, as well as a dramatic 458% increase in the number of times hackers searched for IoT vulnerabilities.
The following are events that AT&T anticipates will begin to occur or continue in 2016.
DDoS attacks will continue to rise – these attacks are a tool of choice for many attackers
–Possible that we’ll see an increase in “hacktivism.” Threat intelligence will also help to start playing a huge role in being able to defend against these attacks.
–Industry will also be more active in terms of threat intelligence sharing.
Targeted organizations will expand to include more small businesses and smaller institutions
–Hackers can now perform analytics on the data they are collecting and combine data to make it more valuable, so hackers do not just have to target the large organizations, as they can get equally valuable information in other places.
–Smaller organizations are likely to be affected. They previously weren’t hacked because they didn’t have the same wealth of information as bigger stores.
The cybercrime black market will continue to grow
–Corporate boards are also starting to recognize this.
–Risk Management and awareness of cybersecurity related business risks are on the rise and we will see the awareness at the C-level continue to grow.
Healthcare sector will become a bigger target
–Attacks in the healthcare sector will increase because they have so much valuable information.
–Emerging technology adoption, legacy systems/networks and the reliance on service providers in healthcare will make them an attractive target.
Enterprises will start to remove organizational silos to help improve security
–More awareness and communication. Better interoperation.
–Accountability for security will be a shared responsibility.
Business will spend more on becoming proactive in their security defenses and the use of threat intelligence will rise
–Managed security will continue to grow. Businesses will re-prioritize their security experts to get ahead of bigger attacks.
The cost to recover from a security incident will continue to rise
–Cloud attacks will grow more serious and widespread in 2016, and will serve as a harsh wake-up call to many organizations. The concern and urgency will quickly trickle down from large enterprises to medium-sized businesses, and drive a spike in demand for stricter, more effective cloud controls and security to better protect critical cloud data. This will also drive increased focus on highly secure cloud networking solutions.
